Miguel Gutierrez
The Age & Beauty Series
Age & Beauty Part 1
decemberdec 7 – 11
© © Ian Douglas ©
Age & Beauty Part 1: Mid-Career Artist/Suicide Note or &:-/
Creation and stage design, Miguel Gutierrez
in collaboration with Mickey Mahar
Music, Jerry Goldsmith, Chuckie, Silvio Ecomo, Miguel Gutierrez
Text, Miguel Gutierrez
Costume design, Dusty Childers and Miguel Gutierrez
Lighting design, Lenore Doxsee
First performed on 23 April 2014 at Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art (New York)
In partnership with Les Spectacles vivants – Centre Pompidou ; LE CND, un centre d’art pour la danse ; Festival d’Automne à Paris // With support from The MAP Fund, Creative Capital, New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Maggie Allesse National Choreographic Center at Florida State University, I’Institut Français (FIAF) as part of the Crossing the Line Festival (New York), New York Live Arts with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, Hollins University, the ]domains[ programme of Centre Choreographique National de Montpellier, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Mount Tremper Arts, Abrons Arts Center // With support from FUSED, French-US Exchange in Dance (a New England Foundation programme for the Arts’ National Dance Project), cultural department of the Embassy of France in the USA, FACE Foundation, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Florence Gould Foundation, and Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication français).
With support from Sonia Rykiel for Age & Beauty Part 1 et Age & Beauty Part 2
The Age & Beauty trilogy could be seen as a “portrait of the artist as a young man growing old”. Or alternatively, a bitingly critical testament haunted by the idea of suicide, and of giving up the fight for recognition. What we are confronted with is a ferocious, no-holds-barred bout of self-reflection, dealing with, in no apparent order, compromise, growing old, and love. A sort of Beckettian “You must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on” for the post-modern era. But then again it could also be seen as an extended, angry, gay poem, taking in an eclectic medley of portraits, kitsch, wasted bodies and out-of-tune tunes. It all amounts to a radical and festive manifesto, a big Fuck You to conformism and resignation. These different facets are key to Miguel Gutierrez’s work - American artist, choreographer and musician - and are mirrored, to disco ball-like effect, in these three works. They are complemented by a flood of beguiling subtitles, along the lines of “suicide notes” and “the choreographer and his muse”.
In the third part, he has invited a group of performers to join him in order to collectively crack open his own imagination. Young, old, and not looking like dancers at all, they nonetheless dance, sing, and multiply all the different connections and interactions en route. They are carried along by Miguel Gutierrez’s musical composition - a dream-like mixture of science fiction and ambient songs, spiced up with TV music. Via this array of different portraits, the choreographer questions his own place, the posteriority of his work and the consistency of these stories which puts six individuals together on a stage.
December 6th, 15h
Free Entrance
Mona Bismarck American Center
34 avenue de New York 75116 Paris
Reservation : rsvp@monabismarck.org
Miguel Gutierrez
discusses Age & Beauty
American choreographer Miguel Gutierrez will speak (in English) about his Age & Beauty trilogy. This suite of queer pieces addresses the representation of the dancer, the physical and emotional labor of performance. Gutierrez will go behind the scenes and dissect his hypothesis that relationships, money, and flights of fancy are at the center of all art making.
In the same place