Sallie Bingham

  • Events
  • Blog
    • Doris Duke
    • Best of 2024
    • My Favorites
    • Full Archives
    • Writing
    • Women
    • Philanthropy
    • My Family
    • Politics
    • Kentucky
    • New Mexico
    • Travel
    • Art
    • Theater
    • Religion
  • Books & Plays
    • Doris Duke
    • Fiction
    • Nonfiction
    • Plays
    • Poetry
    • Anthologies
  • Writing
    • Short Stories
    • Poems
    • Plays
    • Translations
  • Resources
    • Audio
    • Video
    • Print
    • Biography
  • About
    • Contact
 
You are here: Home / Theater / Flamenco: The I I Do Not Wish to Lose

Flamenco: The I I Do Not Wish to Lose

June 23rd, 2019 by Sallie Bingham in New Mexico, Theater Leave a Comment

Lucía Álvarez "La Piñona"

She is called “La Piñona” and she is magnificent. I have seen US dancers perform in Flamenco; the women sometimes seem to me too sweet, smiling at their male partners and flirting in the accepted way.

Not the Spaniard La Piñona.

When I saw her dance last weekend as part of the three week Festival Flamenco Alburquerque at the University of New Mexico—which includes classes, seminars, and fourteen evenings of dance—she was as remorseless as I remember the women I saw dancing in Seville.

The whole tragic history of Spain seemed contained in this music and these movements.

Her performance that night was called “Emovere,” translated as movement toward the outside, to put oneself in motion. And motion it was: sweeping, wide-armed gestures, unusual in Flamenco, whirling with her great skirts airborne, approaching the male musicians and singers who were placed at the four corners of the stage with their weeping, bleeding, pleading, somber melodies, taking the white rose from her hair. She offered it to each man, then, as he reached for it, she snatched it back.

The whole tragic history of Spain seemed contained in this music and these movements. I remember visiting the family house of the playwright Lorca, from which he was snatched by the Fascists during the Spanish Civil war, assassinated and thrown into a mass grave. Nobody knows to this day where his bones rest.

La Piñona would understand that destiny. As she said of her dancing in the program notes, “Every emotion has a consequence, and this itself is the movement. I do not conceive of one without the other. All the years of my career… are transformed into a testimony: mine.” This is the “I I do not wish to lose.”

There is pleading in some of her gestures, as there is pleading in the musicians’ songs—a desperation in the face of what has to be—the darkness of history. It can only be accepted.

And there is stillness, so rare on the stage in any performance. At the start of her first number, “Re-signation,” as the musicians lament and urge, La Piñona sits absolutely still on a chair in the center of the stage. Her eyes are downcast, her arms limp at her sides, her great flame of a dress stilled.

And then, as the result of some mysterious inner urging, she suddenly stands up and stretches out her long arms in a world-embracing gesture of welcome and challenge.

Then she begins to dance.

Share
Tweet
Share
Buffer5
5 Shares

In New Mexico, Theater dancing

A long and fruitful career as a writer began in 1960 with the publication of Sallie Bingham's novel, After Such Knowledge. This was followed by 15 collections of short stories in addition to novels, memoirs and plays, as well as the 2020 biography The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke.

Her latest book, Taken by the Shawnee, is a work of historical fiction published by Turtle Point Press in June of 2024. Her previous memoir, Little Brother, was published by Sarabande Books in 2022. Her short story, "What I Learned From Fat Annie" won the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize in 2023 and the story "How Daddy Lost His Ear," from her forthcoming short story collection How Daddy Lost His Ear and Other Stories (September 23, 2025), received second prize in the 2023 Sean O’Faolain Short Story Competition.

She is an active and involved feminist, working for women’s empowerment, who founded the Kentucky Foundation for Women, which gives grants to Kentucky artists and writers who are feminists, The Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture at Duke University, and the Women’s Project and Productions in New York City. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Sallie's complete biography is available here.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

 

You might also like

  • Sallie ballroom dancing with instructor
    A Drop of Pure Joy
    A few weeks ago, my beloved dance studio threw its bi-annual Showcase, an afternoon of dance performances by students and teachers for our own pleasure and satisfaction after a lot of hard work and many lessons....
  • Still image from Russian video
    Puttin’ On the Ritz
    That's what we all need right here (wherever here is) and right now....
  • Let’s Dance
    Let’s Dance
    Why dance now, when we are all wrapped to a greater or lesser degree in gloom, even despair, with worse times ahead?...
  • Part Time Dancer
    Part Time Dancer
    I'm so carried away when I dance that I sing along with the music and hardly know or care where I'm putting my flying feet....
 

Subscribe

 

Latest Comments

  • Martha White on The Fruits of the Past Five Years: “Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings: “And suddenly a light is thrown back, as when your train makes a curve, showing…” July 6th, 11:14 am
  • Nenita on The Fruits of the Past Five Years: “I like your writings, I can relate to you. If I had been persevering and seriously aware of my interests…” July 6th, 11:13 am
  • Sallie Bingham on Whose Eyes: “Thank you, James – you are correct!” June 29th, 11:19 am
  • Martha White on Feeding the Fish: “Blinkying Report:: Our neighborhood rabbits have been observed leaping into the air three or four feet off the ground. It…” June 29th, 8:10 am
  • Martha White on Whose Eyes: “Subtle. The “b” stays silent—subtle, even.” June 24th, 12:59 pm

Watch Sallie

Taken By The Shawnee

Taken By The Shawnee

July 6th, 2025
Sallie Bingham introduces and reads from her latest work, Taken by the Shawnee.
Visiting Linda Stein

Visiting Linda Stein

March 3rd, 2025
Back on October 28th, 2008, I visited artist Linda Stein's studio in New York City and tried on a few of her handmade suits of armor.

Listen To Sallie

Rebecca Reynolds & Salie Bingham at SOMOS

Rebecca Reynolds & Salie Bingham at SOMOS

November 8th, 2024
This event was recorded November 1, 2024 in Taos, NM at SOMOS Salon & Bookshop by KCEI Radio, Red River/Taos and broadcast on November 8, 2024.
Taken by the Shawnee Reading

Taken by the Shawnee Reading

September 1st, 2024
This reading took place at The Church of the Holy Faith in Santa Fe, New Mexico in August of 2024.

Upcoming Events

Jul 25
July 25th - July 27th

The 9th Annual Taos Writers Conference

SOMOS Salon & Bookshop
Taos MO
Sep 23
All day

How Daddy Lost His Ear – Garcia Street Books

Garcia Street Books
Santa Fe NM
Sep 30
3:00 pm - 4:30 pm MDT

How Daddy Lost His Ear – The Church of the Holy Faith

The Church of the Holy Faith
Santa Fe NM
View all of Sallie's events

Latest Tweets

salliebingham avatar Sallie Bingham @salliebingham ·
20h 1942957873966792785

It's important not to be ploughed under by the chaos and intemperance in #WashingtonDC. We don't live in that swamp, and we don't need to allow our hopes and dreams to be drowned out by the noise. "Reasons to Hope": https://buff.ly/Z8lH33D

Image for the Tweet beginning: It's important not to be Twitter feed image.
salliebingham avatar Sallie Bingham @salliebingham ·
1 Jul 1940081262770708499

Years ago a man I was in love with persuaded me to have a large fish pond dug near my studio. I think it was his attempt to be part of my necessarily solitary life there; like other such attempts it failed—and now I'm left with the fish pond! https://buff.ly/fGgnN39 #Koi #KoiPond

Image for the Tweet beginning: Years ago a man I Twitter feed image.
Load More

Recent Press

Sallie Bingham's latest is a captivating account of ancestor's ordeal
Pasatiempo, The Santa Fe New Mexican

“I felt she was with me” during the process of writing the book, Bingham says. “I felt I wasn’t writing anything that would have seemed to her false or unreal.”

Copyright © 2025 Sallie Bingham. All Rights Reserved.

Press Materials   —   Contact Sallie

Privacy Policy

Menu
  • Events
  • Blog
    • Doris Duke
    • Best of 2024
    • My Favorites
    • Full Archives
    • Writing
    • Women
    • Philanthropy
    • My Family
    • Politics
    • Kentucky
    • New Mexico
    • Travel
    • Art
    • Theater
    • Religion
  • Books & Plays
    • Doris Duke
    • Fiction
    • Nonfiction
    • Plays
    • Poetry
    • Anthologies
  • Writing
    • Short Stories
    • Poems
    • Plays
    • Translations
  • Resources
    • Audio
    • Video
    • Print
    • Biography
  • About
    • Contact