LANDING with Miguel Gutierrez

Envisioned and designed collaboratively with Miguel Gutierrez, LANDING is an experiment in pedagogy, research, mentorship, and possibility.

Over the course of six months, a selected group of dance artists meet with each other, Gutierrez, and a variety of extraordinary guest performing artists and administrators in the context of workshops, artist talks, studio time, performances, and public presentation. Using the web of unique resources available through Gibney, the goal is to create a network of experiences to address and support the interests and challenges that face dance artists either newly arrived to New York or those who feel the need for better navigation through the current dance and performance landscape. Traditional distinctions between “dancer” and “choreographer” are not relevant. All the participants are considered generative artists.

The various emphases of LANDING are: creating community, valuing experimentation in the creative process, making space for critical inquiry, listening to how other people in the dance and performance community are making it work, generating practical and administrative skills in order to survive financially, prioritizing self-care in order to prevent burnout, and activating a conversation about the cultural, social and political value of dance and performance work in today’s world.

LANDING proposes an alternative to the academic educational model. There is no institutional evaluation. In terms of a “syllabus,” the participants collaborate with Gutierrez to define the directions that the program takes in a real time dynamic and responsive structure that emphasizes peer-to-peer learning. The guest artist visits are informal and personal and vary from presentations on their work, conversations between them, Gutierrez and the participants, a sharing of some aspect of their practice, or a combination of all of the above. Because of the small number of the participants and the ongoing nature of the LANDING meetings, these visits have a more intimate quality than the conventional artist lecture or a drop-in “master class.”