Made in USA | Age & Beauty Part 1

Miguel Gutierrez has earned himself a special place on the New York dance and performance scene with work that sincerely tackles his generation’s struggles and quests. Following on from a series of successful productions, he had the luck and the stamina to tour the US and Europe with a large-scale show, “And lose the name of action”.

The show won him awards, titles and acclaim but he felt the need to return to a smaller scale and more improvised, freer modes of production. He wanted to address a big question: how do people realign themselves towards life when they reach ‘middle age’ (and, in his case, the mid-way point in their career)?
Which goals do we rethink, and how do we dream of life “from here on in”? What are the particular challenges of this phase in our lives? Having played an active role in the gay community’s fight for their rights in New York, he decided to create a trilogy tackling the issue of identity and gender from the vantage point of middle age. What sort of reception can a middle-aged, homosexual choreographer expect from a system which privileges youth and the new? And how do we respond to the goal of growing old beautifully when everything around us is seemingly designed for people who will never grow old at all?

Exploiting the contrast, Gutierrez has joined forces with an amazing young dancer, Mikey Mahar, for the first part of the trilogy which we will be seeing at the Onassis Stegi. Their individual interpretations illuminates the differences between them in a choreography which is danced in unison and accompanied by a febrile text written by Gutierrez himself. Once again, Miguel Gutierrez generously shares a personal, sincere, humorous work with us which is packed with dance.

“Age & Beauty Part 1: Mid-Career Artist/Suicide Note or &:-/” was commissioned for the 2014 Whitney Biennial and was made possible with support and developmental residencies from the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University, the ]domaines[ program at Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon in Montpellier, France and Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia.