Live Arts Presents Miguel Gutierrez World Premiere of SUPER NOTHING

New York Live Arts' will present the world premiere of Miguel Gutierrez's Super Nothing, a new dance piece in which the dancers' actions and choreographic relationships are analogues for how people, particularly QTBIPOC (Queer and Trans People of Color) people, support each other to survive.

Super Nothing will premiere at New York Live Arts Theater (219 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011) from Sunday, January 12th through Saturday, January 18th. There will be a Stay Late conversation on January 17th. Tickets start at $30 with limited Pay What You Wish options available, and can be purchased at NewYorkLiveArts.org or 212-691-6500, on sale now. 

In his new quartet, Gutierrez continues to use attention as a material form and as a means to unravel normative belief systems. He creates empathetic and irreverent spaces for QTPOC people to dream, find agency, and process grief. Super Nothing presents performers whose actions and choreographic relationships are analogues for how people support each other to survive. Interdependence takes multiple forms, as the performers move through representations of the past to create a blueprint for a new future. 

Super Nothing was born from an archival residency at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, where Gutierrez was invited to spend time with years' worth of rehearsal footage during his multiple residencies there. In this process, he began to notice all of the interstitial moments, the dance material that didn't make its way into final works, the subtle interpersonal dynamics between director and performers. He explores how a rehearsal process invites or denies conversation about these elements, how it invites or denies conversations about what is happening outside of the studio - personal, social, political events. In exploring what a studio can hold and sustain, he set out to reconstruct some of the lost material. Collaborators also generated new responses to not only his work, but to events in their own lives. 

What has emerged is a dance that Gutierrez calls “an emotional MRI for how people, MY people, come together to process the overwhelm, how we support each other and maintain ourselves despite the onslaught of violence we witness everywhere.” While the piece is not a direct response to any one particular personal or world event, it is an exploration of how grief courses through everything and sets a baseline emotion where we measure the distance between the world we know could exist and the one we are confronted with. 

Composer Rosana Cabán is a Puerto Rican born, Brooklyn based artist. She uses sound, sculpture and performance as mediums to probe problematic binaries such as masculinity and femininity and technology vs. human progress. The piece is performed by Jay Carlon, Evelyn Lilian Sanchez Narvaez, Justin Faircloth, and Wendell Gray II. Lighting design by Carolina Ortiz; Costume Design by Jeremy Wood; Dramaturgy by Stephanie Acosta.

“Miguel has always been an artist that is hard to define, reinventing his language and form (or formlessness) with every work. We at New York Live Arts are in great anticipation of the world premiere of Super Nothing and are proud to have been able to tailor the RCA residency to suit Miguel's creative process and organizational needs,” said Jones and Wong. 

Super Nothing is commissioned, produced and presented by New York Live Arts as part of the Randjelović /Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist Program (RCA), with lead support from the Mellon Foundation. The program is by invitation only and offers two years of salary, healthcare benefits, full-time access to dedicated office space during the entire residency period, creative funds, a technical theater residency and fully-produced production.b Super Nothing was additionally co-commissioned by On the Boards/Seattle, Center for the Art of Performance/UCLA, MCA Chicago and American Dance Festival with support from the Doris Duke/SHS Foundations Award for New Works. Super Nothing is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by New York Live Arts and NPN. The Creation & Development Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). Super Nothing was made possible with generous support from Café Royal Cultural Foundation and developed with residency support from Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University, UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance, Pillow Lab at Jacob's Pillow, American Dance Festival and The Field Center.

Live Arts' 2024-2025 season presents works that offer unique perspectives on freedom, identity, resilience, spirituality and our place in the world, resonating deeply with the belief that the communal begins with the personal. Onsite performance tickets start at a standard price of $30. Live Arts is proud to launch new community ticket pricing, allowing the public to choose a price that fits any budget. Limited “Pay-What-You-Wish” tickets are available for all onsite events. To support this, Live Arts has introduced a "What-It-Really-Costs" ticket at $250, reflecting the true cost of a performance in NYC. Students and Seniors receive 20% off standard prices and $10 Student Rush tickets are available for any onsite show that is not sold-out.