Visiting dance visionary challenges, vexes and perplexes audience

The Grace Street Theatre hosted avant-garde dance troupe Miguel Gutierrez and The Powerful People this weekend.

Gutierrez’s grace and physical aesthetics were overshadowed
by his self-indulgent shock choreography and torturous antics on the microphone and loop pedal.

Seemingly tormented by his own existence in his piece “Retrospective Exhibitionist and Difficult Bodies,”
Gutierrez elaborated on his manifested ideas of ” ‘hyper presence,’ where the real becomes more real, while restlessly situated within the artifice of the stage,” according to the program notes.

The show began atypical of other Grace Street Theatre performances – with the stage and house lights glaring. Gutierrez emerged carrying a boom box, wearing nothing but red Nikes and a green trucker cap. Then he marched around the stage setting up the props that he would use throughout the first half of the performance – a full-length mirror, towels, a chair, phone books, dumbbells, a video camera, a TV, a microphone, an amplifier and some comfortable clothes. The audience simply gazed, a few snickers filtering through the blaring U2 music.

After Gutierrez switched his hat and shoes for warm-up pants and a T-shirt, the music stopped and he led the audience in a chant: “I (I) am (am) Miguel (Miguel) Gutierrez (Gutierrez). I am Miguel Gutierrez (I am Miguel Gutierrez).”

Miguel then displayed some rather eccentric choreography that involved lying on the floor, knees up, hands and arms flailing. This seizure-like behavior continued for a little less than five minutes.

Naturally, the family in front of me was bewildered – especially their 4-year-old girl. She apparently could not understand why people had not shied away from the sight of a naked man on stage. Maybe the babysitter was sick or they simply missed the signs throughout the lobby stating, “This show contains nudity and adult content.”

Next, Gutierrez went into a free-solo improvisation,
which was the highlight of the evening for me. It demonstrated why he is such a success both as a choreographer and a dancer. The extensions were solid for his moderate body type, and his balance and turns were a testament to his renowned technique.

After that, the show started to take an introspective turn. Using photos of himself, Gutierrez looked at each image through his camcorder while it was projected on the TV. He then used the camera and the VCR at the same time and played a video of himself looking at himself looking at himself looking at himself.

Gutierrez’s antics continued with some self-critical dialogue spoken into the mirror and, later, a microphone. His loop pedal turned his phrases into a garbled mess that made audience members cover their ears. This was the moment that proved too much for the family of the little girl in front of me; they did not stay to hear the volume diminish.

Then, Gutierrez cut the sound and stormed off stage, mumbling something about “eating as much (expletive) chocolate as I can until I leave Richmond and go back to New York.”

Perhaps the strangest and most humorous part of the night involved Gutierrez suspending himself in a crab-soccer stance with a candle toasting his rear end. As he sang music by Kate Bush, seemingly random members of the audience came on stage and decreased the distance between the candle and his butt with phone books. Perhaps this was a glimpse into his masochistic side.

The evening reached its halfway point as Gutierrez, facing the audience and naked again, slowly crumpled to the floor while the stage crew struck the stage and set up lights for the next performance.

The second half of the show involved Gutierrez on the microphone and displayed three young female dancers wearing gold-, black- and silver-sequined dresses. The presented contrast in the trio was stark, but their movements stayed mostly in unison. As they interacted at a snail’s pace, the emcee set the mood with his own original improvised music layered with the loop pedal.

The tension slowly built as they rolled, twisted and danced for what seemed like an eternity. They even managed to slip out of their dresses. Though the choreography was well done and the dancers’ movements epitomized fluidity, my senses had been so shocked by then performance so far, the dancing meant very little at that point. I found myself covering my ears to the sounds of 20 Gutierrezes layered on top of one another.

Suddenly, the women, wearing panties and T-shirts, stood on the edge of the stage while Beyoncé Knowles played. The dance majors and aficionados in the audience giggled incessantly as the dancers stood, lip-synched and smiled while Gutierrez removed his pants yet again. While in briefs and a sleeveless shirt, he performed the final routine of the night, which involved interesting pairings and plenty of off-color groundwork, with his dancers.

The dancers, Michelle Boulé, Anna Azrieli (who gave birth 15 months ago) and Eleanor Hullihan,
deserve much respect for their ability to keep the intensity through such a demanding performance.

Gutierrez’s theme, while inexplicably thoughtful, can never be fully expressed and unfortunately loses meaning in translation.

The motto of the night, recited endlessly throughout the trio segment, was “I am perfect and you will love me, and everyone in this room is in this (expletive) dance.”

The meaning was lost on me until the end when I stood up and felt like I just had gone through everything the performers had. The concepts unleashed upon the audience were so emotionally draining that I was left in utter exhaustion.

Though it will be a long time before I subject myself to that type of performance, my hat goes off to you, Miguel, for showing me a side of dance I did not know existed.