Biography
Statements

With the birth of my son in 1999 I started my work as a choreographer. My first funded project was 'flesh and bone'. From then on, I realized several projects, a lot of them in 'non-theatrical' spaces like churches, galleries and empty buildings in the city. Since I never intended to stay in Germany, we went back to Mexico with our son shortly after his birth. There, I began experimenting with video. After almost three years of living in Mexico, we returned to Hamburg. From then on, I spent a lot of time in the editing room at the HfbK, learning camera work and editing from film student friends.

 

"For me, the medium of video is a wonderful complement to my work, since dance is, after all, ephemeral and short-lived. I have realized various video works so far, from experimental to on stage and/or in the form of a short documentary. My last video project MY DANCE SPACE is a good example, which I realized as a reflection of the first lockdown with dancers* and choreographers from Hamburg (February 2021).

The magazine TANZ (at that time called "ballet-tanz") published an article about a project of mine, written by Arnd Wesemann, in 2008. He was interested in the video and dance project, which I later presented on various stages: MY DANCE ROOM – I filmed 35 migrants from Hamburg dancing at home. This resulted in an uncommented 35-minute dance documentary about the love of dance that many bring with them from their cultures and cannot always live out here in Germany. I was very happy that the most important dance magazine in Europe reported about my production. That time as a freelance choreographer was not easy. From year to year I didn't know whether I would get another grant. Who would have thought that 21 years later I would still be very active in the dance landscape.

In 2010 I showed SUPERHERO, my first project at Kampnagel. There, I met wonderful people who supported my work; primarily the artistic director Amelie Deuflhardt and the dramatist Nadine Jessen. I held a total of 16 projects there from 2010 to 2019, ranging from small to large. I also curated platforms. Kampnagel felt like my second home throughout these years.

Some of my highlights in this period of almost 10 years at Kampnagel were the productions: SUPERHERO-2010, AXEL & AXEL 2012-2013, ROMEO vs. ROMEO-2012, DEAD DANCE ZONE - 2014, POLITICAL BODIES - 2015, PLANET KIGALI - 2018.

In 2015, I showed my long-awaited play between Dakar and Hamburg POLITICAL BODIES at Kampnagel. In the summer of the same year, I went to Uganda following an invitation of the Goethe Zentrum Kampala and the German Embassy in Uganda. We went to a big reception at the Ambassador's house where the whole art scene of Kampala was invited. It was a wonderful evening. There we performed THE FAKE EMPIRE with 12 dancers from Kampala - the piece I created together with the Cologne DJ Tom Strauch. My father was proud of my work, he told me: "You are the first Mexican choreographer to work in Africa". He was probably right.

My father Dipl.-Ing. José Fausto Gutiérrez Aragón was a wonderful father, an academic, and Rector at the University of Morelos. At that time he promoted the arts he loved, especially classical music. Thanks to him, the University of Morelos created the first contemporary dance company in the state of Morelos YOLI-XINASTLI-1986 directed by Raúl Aguilar, dancer and choreographer from Cuernavaca. He had made his career in Mexico City and had returned to Cuernavaca, my hometown. There he trained me and was an important part of my development for many years. Our goal: to bring contemporary dance to the people. We showed our pieces everywhere. I still remember the big eyes that people made when they watched us dance. Especially in the villages where we performed.

Since I unfortunately had to deal with the death of loved ones in earlier years, the topic occupies me very much until today. Together with the already deceased Abel Coelho from the USA/Brazil I developed a dance workshop at the dance platform BIDEin Barcelona. There, we offered the laboratory THE DEAD BODY. We thought nobody would be interested in it. To our great surprise, a lot of dancers signed up and the room was full. This experience gave us the idea to conceive a piece that could fuse content from the European tradition and the Mexican tradition . Abelwas not only responsible for the lighting, but also as a performer and co-choreographer. I miss him. He was scheduled for my production PLANET KIGALI, unfortunately he died before that.

This production DEAD DANCE ZONE has already been shown in two other locations besides Kampnagel: MARKK-Museum-2018 and MBASSY-HAMBURG-2020. Life, like dance, is fleeting, we don't know when we will leave. Happiness and sadness go hand in hand; the happiest moments in my life were accompanied by moments of great sadness. The irony of life: DEAD DANCE ZONE is the only project that has received funding from the independent scene - the production that talks about death and is most alive.

On my first trip to theAfrican continent in 2012, at the invitation of the choreographer Helge Letonja to a dance residency by Ecole des Sables near Dakar, I experienced dance in a completely different dimension. I experienced the B-Boy scene first hand and I learned there about the political movement Y'en a Marre<, which had finally managed to get a new president elected. More trips of research followed to bring the POLITICAL BODIES project to the stage. More trips, as described above, followed; to Uganda, then to Tanzania, where I did three dance productions between 2017-2018, and finally to Rwanda. From 2017 I realized my first decolonizing-silent-walk-performative city tour URBAN BODIES PROJECT. This was invited to the international festival THEATER DER WELT. Afterwards, this project was invited to Amsterdam, to the international dance festival JULIDANS, and to Stuttgart, to the festival DIE IRRITIERTE STADT. In 2022 two URBAN BODIES projects were shown in Mexico, the first in Mexico City and the second in Guadalajara, within the Jalisco International Dance Festival. Later, the project DECOLONYCITIES followed in Hamburg in 2019 (with the Dar-es-Salaam City) and 2021 (with the city of Kigali). The last DECOLONYCITIES Projekt has been realized between Windhuk and Hamburg in 2022. Two more should follow between Lomé, Togo and Duala, Cameroon. Alle these projects are release by a diverse and international team under the new platform founded by myself called SHAPE THE FUTURE."
(May 2023)