\n<\/p>\n
The title of Miguel Gutierrez\u2019s latest work, \u201cSuper Nothing<\/a>,\u201d reaches toward opposite ends of a spectrum, as if pulling itself apart: over-full and empty, momentous and insignificant. It evokes the contradictions of a life in dance \u2014 that medium which requires so much effort for so little material reward \u2014 and of being alive in general. In a recent conversation<\/a> with Bill T. Jones, the artistic director of New York Live Arts, where \u201cSuper Nothing\u201d opened on Sunday, Gutierrez noted that a dance or a life, in the grand scheme of things, \u201cis a little blip.\u201d<\/p>\n Which doesn\u2019t detract from what a dance can do, or why it might be needed. In \u201cSuper Nothing,\u201d the potent culmination of a two-year Live Arts residency, Gutierrez, 54, asks how dance can confront life\u2019s steady stream of grief. How can relationships, relying on one another, help us through?<\/p>\n The relationships here, rife with both tenderness and struggle, play out among a cast of four dancers \u2014 Jay Carlon, Justin Faircloth, Wendell Gray II and Evelyn Lilian Sanchez Narvaez \u2014 who give themselves completely to the evening\u2019s messy demands. At different times, they could be lovers, family, friends or strangers. While Gutierrez, whose work cuts across disciplines of writing, music and dance, often makes text-heavy pieces, \u201cSuper Nothing\u201d communicates almost entirely through movement, driven by the thumping beats of Rosana Cab\u00e1n\u2019s immersive sound design. The exception is an introductory poem that urges us to surrender our attention, and asks: \u201cWhat will happen? What will happen to us?\u201d<\/p>\n From this precipice of a question, the dance begins. Faircloth and Gray are the first to appear, one\u2019s chin perched on the other\u2019s shoulder before they break off on separate paths, limbs flinging and slicing with a restlessness that will intensify over the next hour. Gutierrez developed this work in part through revisiting old footage of his rehearsals. That process of sifting through the archive might contribute to the overall sense of fragments stitched together, sometimes with a smooth inevitability, sometimes with a jagged unpredictability.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n