Miguel Gutierrez, Visiting Artist Lecture 2025

Choreographer, dancer, and performance artist Miguel Gutierrez gives a lecture at Skowhegan. Gutierrez sings, dances, and shares screenings of his performances and choreography works throughout his lecture. For Gutierrez, his work often reverts to a solipsistic exploration of self engagement and is an exploration of his archive. For Gutierrez, the usefulness of the archive is only how it lives in the present: how it speaks with, argues with, soothes, fails, and is re-imagined by the now. Collaboration is another important touchstone for Gutierrez, and he speaks about how he works with fashion designers, set designers, other dancers and performance artists in his work. Gutierrez stresses how he appreciates these design collaborations over multiple projects because this kind of collaboration also allows Gutierrez to make space in the apparatus of theatre. Making this kind of space has become important for Gutierrez, who stresses the importance of what kinds of tools are needed to function for a space to run successfully. Every space has its own tools, with some of those tools being oppressive. It is up to the artist to learn how to subvert these tools. Gutierrez then speaks about his dance practice and how so much of it is about talking and being in dialogue. Gutierrez speaks about the process he is going through to undo the trope of the patriarchal choreographer. Gutierrez ends his lecture by stating that dance is about presence and combining a weird conflagration of things that ultimately creates a feeling.