Everyone In This Room Is In This Fucking Dance (@ Brooklyn Rail)

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Often people discuss a new “sincerity” among an emergent generation of artists. In countless ways, Gutierrez’s choreography represents for me a new kind of sincerity in dance. But the term sincerity is tricky, because it doesn’t admit the many ironic strategies Gutierrez also employs. Perhaps a better term is in order. Affectively intense? Emotionally porous? Gutierrez’s texts present collective affects, if only through the guise of a singular speaker: “I am perfect and / you will love me and / everyone in this room is in this fucking dance.” Where does Gutierrez’s autobiography leave off and where does the experience of his reader pick up? How much is a kind of journalism and how much narrative-poetic invention? A facile sincerity is constantly checked by a modernist sensibility (a la Brecht or Godard), providing the terms of our meditation, framing our attention.