Miguel Gutierrez
Miguel Gutierrez is a dance and music artist based in Brooklyn. He makes solo and group work with a variety of artists under the moniker Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People. Miguel assembled the first incarnation of the Powerful People in the fall of 2001 when he was invited for a choreographic residency in the pilot season of the Ensemble Studio Theater’s Lexington Center for the Arts. Never having been interested in a traditional model of a “company,” Gutierrez sees the participating artists in his work–dancers, composers, designers and visual artists–as part of an ever-expanding net of inspiring collaborators. Gutierrez’s interest in working with others is related to the questions in his work involving group identity and communal experience. He continues to work in solo form and on smaller scale pieces. Regardless of the size of the project, it is Gutierrez’s goal to create challenging and thought-provoking performance experiences.
The work has enjoyed considerable attention in the printed and virtual press. Increasingly, the company is engaged to perform in venues across the country and internationally. Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People have created eight works: enter the seen (2002), I succumb (2003), dAMNATION rOAD (2004), Retrospective Exhibitionist and Difficult Bodies (2005), myendlesslove (2006), Everyone (2007), Nothing, No Thing (2008), and Last Meadow (2009). In 2001 Miguel instigated the performance/protest/meditation freedom of information (2001, 2008 & 2009). More information:www.freedomofinformation2008.blogspot.com. In the U.S MGPP has been presented by Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, The Abrons Arts Center, and The Kitchen (New York, NY), ODC (San Francisco, CA), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, MN), the Flynn Center (Burlington, VT), DiverseWorks! (Houston, TX), and the Fusebox Festival (Austin, TX). Internationally it has toured to several venues and festivals such as Antipodes Festival at Le Quartz (Brest), Politics of Ecstasy (Berlin), Kampnagel (Hamburg), Explore Festival (Bucharest), ImPulsTanz (Vienna), Les Halles (Brussels), Le Menagerie de Verre (Paris), Zodiak Center for New Dance (Helsinki), Perforcije Festival (Zagreb), Festival Nouvelles (Strasbourg), Latitudes Contemporanies, (Lille) and Springdance (Utrecht).
Miguel is a 2010 Fellow in Choreography from the Guggenheim Foundation and a recipient of a 2010 Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant for Artists. He has also received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Capital, the Jerome Foundation, the Rockefeller MAP Fund, the National Performance Network Creative Commissioning Fund and New York Foundation for the Arts’ Fellowship and BUILD programs. He is twice the winner of a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award: in 2002 for dancing with John Jasperse Company and in 2006 as a choreographer for Retrospective Exhibitionist and Difficult Bodies. He has worked as a curator for The Kitchen’s Dance and Process program, and SHTUDIO SHOW at Chez Bushwick. WHEN YOU RISE UP, a collection of his performance writings, is now available from 53rd State Press. He teaches regularly around the world and he invented DEEP AEROBICS, an absurd(ist) workout for the leftist imagination-revolutionary in all of us. He has been lucky to work with a wide variety of extraordinary contemporary dance artists, such as Joe Goode, Juliette Mapp, Sarah Michelson, Jennifer Lacey, Deborah Hay, and Alain Buffard.