Miguel Gutierrez joins the faculty of UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance
UCLA Arts welcomes a new member to the faculty of the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance: associate professor Miguel Gutierrez.
Miguel Gutierrez creates dance-based performances, music, and poetry that focus on desire, identity, and the search for meaning. He is a choreographer, music artist, writer, visual artist, educator, podcaster, community advocate/agitator, and Feldenkrais Method practitioner. He has spent the last 25 years living on Lenape/Canarsie land in the area referred to as Brooklyn, NY.
Photo by Robbie Sweeny
His work has been presented in venues and with organizations including REDCAT, Show Box LA, Los Angeles Performance Practice, Wexner Center for the Arts, Walker Art Center, Centre Pompidou, Festival Universitario de Colombia, Centre National de la Danse, Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York Live Arts, the Kitchen, American Realness, and the 2014 Whitney Biennial. He has received support from Dance NYC/Dance Advance Fund, MAP, New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, National Performance Network, and Creative Capital. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, United States Artists, New York Foundation for the Arts, and Foundation for Contemporary Arts. He has a Franky Award from the PRELUDE Festival, and he has received four New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards. He was a 2016 Doris Duke Artist.
Gutierrez was the 2020-2021 Caroline Hearst Choreographer in Residence at Princeton University, and taught in the dance program as a visiting lecturer. He was also recently a guest lecturer in the M.F.A. program at Hunter College. His new work, I as another, a duet that explores the virtual architecture of memory and how unknowable we are to each other, recently premiered at Bates Dance Festival. And his new music project sueño, where he sings tiny epic odes to melancholy in English and Spanish, was presented on the High Line in New York City. He creates and hosts Are You For Sale?, a podcast that looks at the ethical entanglements between art and money, and his book When You Rise Up is available from 53rd State Press. From 2016 to 2019 he directed LANDING, a non-academic educational and networking initiative for dance and performance artists.
Photo by Robbie Sweeny
“I am absolutely thrilled to join UCLA's Department of World Arts Culture/Dance and am very honored to sit alongside such esteemed artists and scholars in the field,” said Gutierrez. “It’s truly a dream come true. I especially look forward to working with the amazing students that the program attracts at all levels, and to being part of the evolution of the department. I am also excited to build meaningful connections across the departments in the School of Arts and Architecture and with other schools and divisions across the university."
Gutierrez received his B.A. with honors in Theater and Performance Studies from Brown University in 2021 after a 27-year hiatus from college. He is currently a MFA candidate in the Low Residency Studio Art Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, with anticipated degree completion in 2023.
Header Image: Portrait of Miguel Gutierrez by Chloe Cusimano
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