2017 Spring Teaching Artist Miguel Gutierrez: Making Work
February 17-19, 2016
Friday, February 17, 5:30-9:30 PM
Saturday, February 18, 10-2 then 3-5
Sunday, February 19, 10-2 then 3-5
Location: S.F. Conservatory of Dance, Studio 205, 301 8th Street (at Folsom), San Francisco
WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION
In this workshop we will focus on the creative process in making body/movement based performance. Participants will spend the week making short pieces, mostly solos. I first offered this workshop in 2003, and have enjoyed its various permutations throughout the years.
Originally my reason for creating this workshop was that I wanted to find out if it was possible to create the conditions to teach something that can’t actually be learned – how to make work. I discovered that through unequal parts making, discussing, improvising and watching the work of other workshop participants, you can uncover and deepen your individual interests, your process and your work.
My interest is in creating a space where inherited notions of dance and performance are critiqued, absorbed or discarded in the service of creating performance that comes from a vital, necessary place and that speaks to a contemporary context. There is no one way to make work.
My teaching is influenced by: years of teaching this workshop, years of seeing shows and talking with various artists about them, my experiences working with many extraordinary performance makers, my experience in making my own work in various scales and in a host of places/conditions, my pseudo-Zen/Feldenkrais belief system that tells me you can’t force anyone to change but can create the conditions for spontaneous learning, my belief that everyone is a creative artist of potential brilliance and that “genius is as common as dirt.” (John Taylor Gatto)
This workshop is useful for artists who are anywhere in their trajectories as performance makers.
--Miguel Gutierrez
Miguel Gutierrez lives in Brooklyn and makes performances, music and poetry. He is a 2016 Doris Duke Artist. His most recent work is Age & Beauty, a trilogy that places a queer lens on mortality, the representation of the dancer, the intersection of administration with art-making, and an ambivalence toward futurity. His work has been presented in over 50 cities around the world in venues such as Centre National de Danse and Centre Pompidou in Paris, ImPulsTanz in Vienna, Live Arts Bard, New York Live Arts, AMERICAN REALNESS and the 2014 Whitney Biennial. He is the recipient of a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2010 United States Artist Award, a 2010 Foundation for Contemporary Art Award, a three year Lambent Fellowship from the Tides Foundation, and a 2004 and 2008 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. He has created music for several of his works, for choreographer Antonio Ramos, and is currently co-creating music with Colin Self for Jen Rosenblit and Simone Aughterlony’s new work. His book WHEN YOU RISE UP is available from 53rd State Press. He invented DEEP AEROBICS, and he is a Feldenkrais Method® practitioner. At the invitation of Gibney Dance Center, he has created new pedagogical peer to peer initiative called LANDING, which begins fall 2016. www.miguelgutierrez.org