First off, the full title of Miguel Gutierrez’ upcoming world premiere at Live Arts Bard is Age & Beauty Part 3: DANCER or You can make whatever the fuck you want but you’ll only tour solos or The Powerful People or We are strong/We are powerful/We are beautiful/We are divine or &:’///.
A MAP 2014 project, Age & Beauty Part 3 is the third and culminating chapter in a series* addressing the representation of the dancer, the physical and emotional labor of performance, tropes about the aging gay choreographer, the interaction of art making with administration, “queer time”, futurity, and mid-life anxieties about relevance, sustainability and artistic burnout. Does your work have a life beyond your own? What does the utopian ideal of a dance company look like? Gutierrez imagines answers to these questions and offers us the opportunity to envision a new future filled with lamentation, aspiration, melancholy, fantasy, and doubt. Performed by Gutierrez along with an intergenerational cast whose immediate physical representation is not “dancer,” Age & Beauty Part 3 is a choreography for the end of the world.
Along with the premiere, the September 10-13 performances at Live Arts Bard include a presentation of the complete series in two full days of marathon performances — the first time time audiences will be able to experience all three installments in one day. These performances cap a three-week production residency at Bard, during which Gutierrez and company finished the creation of Age & Beauty Part 3 and prepared the full trilogy for performance. Tickets and more information are available here.
Next up is the full series presentation and New York premiere of Age & Beauty Part 3 at New York Live Arts from September 16-26, co-presented with FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival. Tickets and more information here.
*Full titles of the preceding works in the series: Age & Beauty Part 1: Mid-Career Artist/Suicide Note or &:-/ and Age & Beauty Part 2: Asian Beauty @ the Werq Meeting or The Choreographer & Her Muse or &:@& (also MAP 2014).
