| Miguel Gutierrez |
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mancc research highlights
At MANCC, Miguel Gutierrez split his time between the movement, audio and visual investigation for his new group piece entitled “Everyone”, and the staging of his recent solo “myendlesslove”. Gutierrez sought to find a new mode or sensibility for his work in which the performance serves as anexperience, a condition or situation which houses the audience and performers, rather than a presentation or product for consumption. Community was invited to participate in Gutierrez’s experience-based exercises, and to observe and discuss work in progress showings of both pieces. Collaborators included dancers Michelle Boule, Otto Ramstad, Elizabeth Ward, Isabel Lewis, and musician/composer Chris Forsyth. artist outcomes | community outcomes | biography | collaborators | photos | website ARTIST OUTCOMES "myendlesslove" premiered in November 2006 at MIX NYC 19th New York Lesbian & Gay Experimental Film Festival at the New 3LD Art & Technology Center. The performance piece explores the world of sexual idealism, the poetics of sex, desire and the longing for the perfect partner. Gutierrez tells the story of lost love with dance, live and recorded video, and original music looped with a digital delay pedal. "Everyone" premiered in March 2007 through Danspace Project at The Abrons Art Center, Henry Street Settlement in New York City. COMMUNITY OUTCOMES Miguel shared both works with students, faculty and community members. Everyone included a invitation to participate with the company in a written and spoken exercise. He spent time working on "sense work" with the grad students. Miguel presented to all dance student, staff and faculty in Dance Forum. "Miguel reminded me to take more liberty with choreographic structure. In seeing "Everyone" and "myendlesslove" while Miguel was at MANCC, I was able to go much deeper into the emotion of the pieces because he didn't provide typical predictable timing with the motifs (spinning, jumping, balancing, talking, guitar-playing); he stuck with each idea for refreshingly longer than I expected." --Seiji Gammage, MFA in Dance candidate BIOGRAPHY Born in New York to Colombian parents, Miguel Gutierrez grew up in New Jersey where he first studied ballet and jazz at Verne Fowler School of Performing Arts and New Jersey School of Ballet. His life was re-directed when he discovered contemporary dance as a young activist living in San Francisco in the early 90's. This led to attempts to finish college at Brown University and New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, which he dropped out of to work with Joe Goode Performance Group for three years. Soon after moving to New York in 1996 he met and worked with Jennifer Lacey in Europe. Returning to New York, he met John Jasperse, who he worked with for the next seven years, earning a New York Dance and Performance Award ("Bessie") in 2002. Although he had already been making small pieces for over ten years while dancing with other artists, it was in 2001 that he shifted his energies primarily to creating his own work. Miguel's work is primarily concerned with questions regarding the nature of existence, asking who we are and why we're here, both in life and in the theater. His first evening length piece with has group the Powerful People was enter the seen, which they performed at Aqui the Bushwick, Miguel's live/work space in Brooklyn, where he lived from 1997-2005, held performances parties and led a variety of workshops in composition and improvisation. The intimacy of enter the seen in this space set the tone for subsequent work, which, while varying in scale, continues to look at how to translate the experiential nature of performing into a sensory experience for the audience. His early group work, which also includes I succumb (2003) and dAMNATION rOAD (2004) is characterized by its collaboration with a variety of contemporary artists, most notably musician Jaime Fennelly, with whom he irregularly performed an improvisation-based duo called Sabotage. To create his most recent evening of work, a solo and a trio called Retrospective Exhibitionist & Difficult Bodies, Miguel pared down his process and made gestures on his own into other forms such as video, text and most importantly, music. This work has been presented at the Open Look Festival in Saint Petersburg, Russia, TOUCH 2005 Festival in Archangelsk, Russia, London Calling (to the faraway towns) Festival in Bologna, Italy, the Hong Kong Fringe Club, Diverseworks in Houston, Texas, American Dance Festival and the solo will travel to the dialogue/preview program at Springdance in Utrecht in 2006. Currently Miguel is working on several new projects: an album of recordings entitled Put it in my mouth, a solo for the MIX Festival in NY called myendlesslove and a new group piece with the Powerful People to be presented in early 2007 made in collaboration with musician Chris Forsyth and long time lighting designer Lenore Doxsee. His work has been supported by several foundations, such as the National Endowment for the Arts, National Performance Network's Creation Fund, Trust for Mutual Understanding and as a fellow in choreography from the New York Foundation for the Arts. COLLABORATORS Michelle Boule
         
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Choreographic Fellow
