sueño

Miguel Gutierrez is a choreographer, music artist, writer, visual artist, educator, podcaster, and Feldenkrais Method practitioner based in Lenapehoking/Brooklyn, NY. His work has been presented internationally in over sixty cities in venues such as the Walker Art Center/Minneapolis, Wexner Center for the Arts/Columbus, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Festival d’Automne/Paris, Festival Universitario/Bogota, and AMERICAN REALNESS. Recent projects include Cela nous concerne tous, a commission for Ballet de Lorraine, This Bridge Called My Ass, a performance that queers tropes of Latinidad, and SADONNA, his sad-version-of-Madonna-songs cover band. He is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, United States Artists Fellowship, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award, four NY Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards, and a 2016 Doris Duke Artist Award. He was a selected artist for the 2014 Whitney Biennial. Recently he was a guest lecturer at Princeton University and in Hunter College’s MFA Art program. His podcast Are You For Sale? examines the ethical entanglements between money and art making. Learn more at miguelgutierrez.org

Rosana Cabán is a Puerto Rican born, Brooklyn based artist. She uses sound, sculpture and performance as mediums to probe problematic binaries such as masculinity and femininity, good and evil, and technology vs human progress. She has most notably performed at the Brooklyn Museum, National Sawdust, the Fillmore, Webster Hall, and over 80 rock venues across the US and Canada through touring with Strfkr, LadyHawke, and the Generationals and opening for Sylvan Esso. She has collaborated with Naama Tsabar to perform at the Kasmin Gallery, the Guggenheim, and the High Line. Cabán was an Ace Hotel Artist in Residence in 2017, Marble House Project Artist in Residence in 2018, and a guest collaborator for Lucas Artists Fellow Xandra Ibarra at Montalvo Arts Center in 2020.

Justin Faircloth is a performing artist originally from North Carolina where they graduated high school from UNC School of the Arts. Since moving to New York and graduating from NYU – Tisch School of the Arts, Justin has had the pleasure of working with Blaze Ferrer, Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance, Doug LeCours, loveconductors, Jeremy Nelson and Luis Lara Malvacías (Third Class Citizen), Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Reiner, Maddie Schimmel, Third Rail Projects, Ashley R.T. Yergens, Jessie Young, and Abby Z + the New Utility, among others. IG: @bacnneggs

Michelle Fletcher is a live performance maker, director, educator and artist manager based in Lenapehoking, colonially known as New York. Fletcher earned her BFA from North Carolina School of the Arts and her MFA from Florida State University. Fletcher was a Fulbright Scholar at The Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, teaching contemporary technique and dance technology. Making evening length work since 2008, her pieces have been presented at ODC Theater, CounterPulse, Triskelion, and CPR. Fletcher’s dance for camera films include Dan’s House, which headlined film festivals including Dance for Camera Festival at Lincoln Center and San Francisco. She currently serves as Manager and thought partner to Camille A. Brown, Beth Gill and Miguel Gutierrez. Fletcher is currently a student at NYU, pursuing a second master’s in social work.

Estado Flotante is an artist based in Brooklyn whose practice ranges from dance/movement to music/sound, and video/visual composition consolidated through his pop music and live performance. Originally from Santiago de Chile where he became dancer, teaching artist and maker, he moves to New York City in 2012 where he has performed and collaborated with various Dance and performance artists like Antonio Ramos, Miguel Gutierrez, Daria Fain, Ishmael Houston Jones and John Kelly among others. Currently he is producing his first EP to be released on all music streaming platforms.

Johnnie Cruise Mercer Jr is a queer black think-maker born in Richmond, VA and based in New York City. A graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University with a BFA in Dance and Choreography, Johnnie considers himself a movement artist who firmly believes in movement philosophy, and the action of embodying history. Collaboration credits: Antonio Brown, Andre Zackery/Renegade Performance Group, Monstah Black & The Illustrious Blacks, Andre Zachery/Renegade Performance Group, Yon Tande, Ishmael Houston-Jones (2018 remount of THEM), Netta Yerushalmy, Maria Bauman/MBDance, Edisa Weeks/Delirious Dances, Antonio Ramos, and more recently with Arthur Aviles/Typical Theater. IG: @johnniecruisemercer

Seta Morton is a values-driven curator, writer/editor, performer/collaborator born and based in Lenapehoking. She is the Program Director/Associate Curator at Danspace Project, the editor of Danspace’s Online Journal, co-editor of Platform 2020: Utterances From The Chorus (Volume I and Volume II with Judy Hussie-Taylor and Okwui Okpokwasili) and co-editor of Platform 2021-2022: The Dream of the Audience. She has had the pleasure of performing and collaborating with artists such as nez hafezi, Toni Carlson, Yves B. Golden, iele paloumpis, and Miguel Gutierrez. Seta’s embodied and written works live in vibratory spaces between iteration, fermentation, time travel, intergenerational memory and haunt.

Angie Pittman is a New York-based Bessie award-winning dance artist, dance maker, and dance educator. Angie’s work resides in a space that investigates how the body dances through ballad, groove, sparkle, spirit, spirituals, ancestry, vulnerability, and power. Learn more at angiepittman.com.

Christopher Ralph was born and raised in Long Island, NY. He began his dance training at Holy Trinity High School, where he was accepted into the theater/dance program led by Cathy Murphy and James Whore. While training at school he simultaneously attended classes at Broadway dance center and Steps on Broadway with teachers such as Dorrit Koppel, Frank Hatchett and Shelia Barker. In 2005 he attended SUNY Purchase College to complete his B.F.A. in dance. Christopher has performed with choreographers and companies such as Gregory Dolbashian (The Dash Ensemble), Loni Landon dance projects, Aszure Barton and Artists, Janis Brenner, Doug Varone, The Metropolitan Opera, Rebecca Lazier, Patrick Corbin, Netta Yerushalmy, Jenn Freeman and Sonya Tayeh. Most recently Christopher worked with the recording artist FKA Twigs on a video project. He currently teaches contemporary and Heels classes at Peridance Capezio Center in New York.

Kim Savarino is an artist working in theater and dance. She creates performances that weave together folklore and movement, in spaces ranging from traditional stages to concrete backlots to (once) an old bathroom in a former mental hospital. Kim is a proud company member with Third Rail Projects and La MaMa’s Great Jones Rep, and has worked with artists including Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Jawole Zollar, and Andrei Serban. She loves dim sum, walking in the woods, and her black cat Hermes. Kim grew up in Los Angeles and West Virginia.

Alex Vásquez Dheming is a Lighting Designer and Production Manager from San Salvador, El Salvador based in NYC. She’s known for her work with Big Dance Theater, Nélida Tirado, Ariel Rivka Dance, New York Theatre Ballet, Calpulli Mexican Dance, Vanaver Caravan, Jacob’s Pillow Dance, Lincoln Center, Center for Performance Research, Performance Space NY, Dance Manager’s Collective, Kaufman Music Center, Rattlesticks Theater, Museo del Barrio, The Tank NYC, Green Space, Playwright Horizons, Hypokrit Productions, and Theatreworks, among others. Her multidisciplinary work has been seen around the United States, Spain (Museo Guggenheim Bilbao), and France (Cannes Film Festival). Alex holds a BFA in Production Design from Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), participated in the Wingspace Theatrical Design Mentorship, is a Stagecraft Institute of Las Vegas alumna, and is a recipient of The Playwright Realm’s inaugural International Theatermakers Award. She was a featured designer in the San Diego Rep’s Latinx New Play Festival 2020.

Santiago Venegas is a singer, songwriter and performer from Bogota, Colombia He has performed previously in Miguel Gutierrez’: Sadonna (Various venues 2017-present) Erin Markey’s Puppy Love: A Stripper’s Tail (P.S 122, 2010), Justin Vivian Bond’s Re:Galli Blonde (A Sissy Fix) (The Kitchen, 2010) and Viva Ruiz’s Immigrantula (Moma PS1 2011). Santiago studied Fashion Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology. He enjoys knitting, crocheting, stressing about death, environmental deterioration, and universal healthcare!

Choreographic assistants: Johnnie Cruise Mercer and Amit Noy

All choreography by Miguel Gutierrez except for the following:

elixir includes phrases by Johnnie Cruise Mercer and Amit Noy

Final images in elixir, and i like money on the wall, and si tu no as well as longer sequences in not the man and you don’t know by Ted Shawn (appropriated from Kinetic Molpai and Labor Symphony)

si tu no choreography by Harald Kreutzberg as seen in Paracelsus (1943, dir. G.W. Pabst)

i like money on the wall inspired by Isadora Duncan, individual movement by the performers

Lyrics in i like money on the wall by Andy Warhol

Music from sueño soon to be released on all streaming platforms.

This show is dedicated with love to Barbara Maier Gustern, an incomparable teacher and human whose guidance, attention, warmth, wisdom, and humor are with me always. Thank you, forever, Barbara.

Thanks
Thank you Melanie Kress for the invitation and for saying yes.
Thank you Constanza Valenzuela, Riley S, and Virginia
Thank you Michelle Fletcher for everything.
Thank you Alvaro, Santi, Justin, Johnnie, Seta, Angie, Chris, Kim for your time, dedication, willingness, intelligence, beauty, and laughter.
Thank you John Gutierrez for the work you did at the beginning of sueño.
Thank you Johnnie and Amit Noy for your support and sweetness.
Thank you to the Pina Bausch Fellowship for supporting Amit.
Thank you Rosana for being a badass, always.
Thank you Alex for diving in.
Thank you Amy for your diligence and care.
Thank you Melanie George and Ali Rosa-Salas for the invitation to Jacob’s Pillow.
Thank you Norton Owen, Patsy Gay and Sumi Matsumoto for access to the archive at Jacob’s Pillow.
Thank you to the staff at Jacob’s Pillow for supporting our mini-residency there: Ariana Massery, Vinnie Vigilante, and Isabella Curci.
Thank you to my mother, Elena Gutierrez, for making the space for me to first develop these songs.
Thank you to Marley Trigg Stewart for love, love, love.
And thank you to my friends and supporters in New York and beyond for following my work and coming to the shows over all these years.