Super Nothing is super trending choreographer and multi-disciplinary artist Miguel Gutierrez’s meditation on grief and the ways queer community strategizes survival and, through that, finds joy. The dance evolved during a two-year Live Arts residency in NY, where it was molded by Gutierrez’s passion for asking the BIG questions; “How to live in the world, how to love, how to feel about being yourself.” And his desire to create “empathetic and irreverent spaces for himself and QTBIPOC folx to dream.” In Gutierrez’s heart, he feels we all have something to say and are empowered enough to deliver it.
But Super Nothing is not a lament on grief as much as it is a deconstruction—a trembling, volatile, orgasmic explosion of movement. It began with dancers Wendell Gray II and Justin Faircloth, who instantly created an aura of confidence with their embodied presence and idiosyncratic movement. Where will this go? What do they want us to know? When and Evelyn Lilian Sanchez Narvaez and Jay Carlon appear, each with their signature movement styles, they add combinations of coupling, helping to create elaborate tableaus.
Carlon mesmerizes throughout the performance, masterfully combining frenzy with lyricism and animated twitching with sensual fluidity. He moves like a fast-cut video loop at times, electric, shimmering, repetitive…dancing across a bare stage from Faircloth’s softer edges and more flamboyant gestures.
The four are sensually unapologetic and graphic—a hand casually placed on one’s own crotch or a face in someone else’s crotch but in a manner that is so swift and matter of fact that it comes off like self-pleasuring rather than a self-conscious audience grabber. They then melt in an afterglow before propelling away from the connection into their isolated orbits and spears of movement. This dynamic spectacle is powerfully driven by Rosana Cabán’s immersive sound design, which incorporates significant moments of silence, during which only the dancers’ footsteps and heavy breathing are audible.
As the dancers exit the stage, suggesting the piece’s conclusion, a pair of orange circular lights illuminate both sides of the back wall. The light shifts, washing over the stage and audience before breaking into various patterns propelled by Cabán’s score with contributions by Gutierrez. It’s as if the dancers have returned to the Light or vanished into thin air—a brilliant way to end this saturating performance. But then they return…dressed in slight variations of their earlier wardrobe with neon-green highlights. (Jeremy Wood, costume design)
The atmosphere shifts dramatically, the score turns into pounding club music, the lighting dims, and the dancing becomes more disparate. Now, one must search for what is happening to try to make sense of it. The choreography offers less, as if the dancers, who gave 100% in the first half, ran out of steam, inspiration, or direction. Eventually, the four come together in the middle of the stage, dancing more uniformly and lyrically connected while mirroring each other. But what was unpredictable and exciting is now lost, as if something generously given was taken away. A death? The flat sensation of grief? A super nothing?
In a recent interview with Bill T. Jones, Gutierrez stated, “I won’t say that my work doesn’t offer hope, but it offers sustenance. I don’t believe that hope is necessarily mutually exclusive from despair.” Perhaps it is this emotional state and experience that Gutierrez wants viewers to engage with, embracing both the fullness and emptiness inherent in everything.
David e. Moreno
