Miguel Gutierrez
DEEP AEROBICS
April 3, Les Substances, Lyon France
April 9, Centre national de la danse, Pantin France
Death Electric Emo Protest Aerobics aka DEEP AEROBICS is a workout form invented and shamelessly disseminated by New York-based choreographer Miguel Gutierrez. It is one hour plus of the communal/political/conceptual/imaginational workout experience you always wanted but never could embarrass yourself enough to find or do in public. It is for anyone who has ever had any interest in combining the joie de vivre that is the vigorous bouncing of one’s anatomical/spiritual/ energetic molecules with the existential absurdity that is living in a world/country/economic system of injustice, war-mongering, and cultural ineptitude. DEEP AEROBICS is a participatory spectacle – it’s a movement, it’s a transformative experience for the mind/body/spirit/genital matrix. Gutierrez asks that each participant come in costume. Please push your imagination beyond the 80’s! Stylists will be present with materials for on-site costume adjustments as necessary.
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DEEP AEROBICS (pour Death Electric Emo Protest Aerobics). L’aérobic absurde de Miguel Gutierrez est au-delà de la chorégraphie et de la technique ! Il vous propose un entraînement collectif avec vos plus beaux collants en lycra, bandeaux pailletés et attributs les plus déjantés, tendance queer mâtinée de Véronique et Davina.
Une heure de tubes pour la meilleure – et peut-être la seule – leçon d’aérobic de votre vie. Si vous venez, vous dansez que vous ayez n’importe quel âge, n’importe quelle condition physique : l’important c’est l’enthousiasme, l’envie de rire et d’entrer dans cet étrange rituel qui revendique la joie de vivre et l’envie de contester ensemble !
Entrée gratuite mais venez déguisés, et poussez votre imagination au-delà des années 80 !
Photos by Pekka Mäkinen
Created by Miguel Gutierrez
Miguel Gutierrez creates performances known for their weaving of dance, song, text and use of emotion as a conceptual and choreographic driver. He uses the conceits of theater – character, dramaturgy, costume, light – to engage and structure persistent questions about the search for meaning. His work joins a legacy of process-focused experimental dance while drawing on influences such as endurance-based performance art, noise music, ecstatic experience in social and religious rituals, the study of mind-body somatic systems, and various histories of spectacle including Broadway and queer club performance. Gutierrez says that his work is “philosophical inquiry disguised as performance.”
His pieces include freedom of information (2001), enter the seen (2002), I succumb (2003), dAMNATION rOAD (2004), Sabotage (with Jaime Fennelly 2001-2004), Retrospective Exhibitionist and Difficult Bodies (2005 Bessie Award), myendlesslove (2006, remounted in 2013), Everyone (2007), Nothing, No thing (2008), Last Meadow (2009 Bessie Award), HEAVENS WHAT HAVE I DONE (2010), And lose the name of action (2012) and Storing the Winter (2012, with Mind Over Mirrors). His most recent piece Age & Beauty Part 1: Mid-Career Artist/Suicide Note or &:-/ premiered as part of the 2014 Whitney Biennial. He has created work for Philip Adams’ Melbourne, Australia based company BalletLab, Sydney, Australia based collaborative trio The Fondue Set and San Francisco based artist Fauxnique.
His work has been presented by venues such as American Realness in NYC, Festival D’Automne and the Pompidou Centre in Paris, ImPulsTanz in Vienna, Festival Universitario de Danza Contemporanéa in Colombia, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MCA Chicago, PICA’s TBA Festival in Portland, the Flynn Center in Burlington and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Art, United States Artists, Lambent Foundation, and New York Foundation for the Arts, as well as support from MAP Fund, Jerome Foundation, Creative Capital, and the NEA. He has been an artist in residence at Fisher Center for the Arts at Bard College, MANCC, LMCC, Baryshnikov Arts Center, CCN Montpellier (France), and Mount Tremper Arts.
He received an additional Bessie Award for his work as a dancer in John Jasperse Company. He has choreographed and performed in music videos for Diane Cluck, Holcombe Waller and Le Tigre (which went viral and produced various copycat videos), has performed as a singer with Justin Vivian Bond, Nick Hallett, Antony and the Johnsons, Vincent Segal, and Holcombe Waller, and has released a self produced EP under the moniker The Belleville. He leads workshops in his approach to creative practice all over the world. He is a current faculty member of Hollins University’s MFA dance program and NYC’s Movement Research.
His book WHEN YOU RISE UP is available from 53rd State Press. He invented DEEP AEROBICS, an absurdist workout, which most recently has been used to warm up audiences for The Knife. He is training to become a practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method. His newest piece, Age & Beauty Part 2: Asian Beauty @ the Werq Meeting or The Choreographer & Her Muse or &:@& premieres in the 2015 AMERICAN REALNESS Festival at Abrons Arts Center in NYC. In addition he is working on a collaborative project with choreographer Alex Ketley based on their travels throughout the American south where they met and interviewed strangers and performed for them. www.miguelgutierrez.org