Are You For Sale? is a podcast that examines dance-making, philanthropy and ethics. Facing multiple grant rejections for his last project, Miguel Gutierrez realized he couldn’t think of an alternative funding model. This led him to study the history of arts funding and how we got to where we are. Looking to visual art for its tradition of Institutional Critique and protests regarding “toxic” philanthropy, Gutierrez asks - Why don’t we see comparable action in the dance and performance world? Are we too afraid of losing what little we have? What effects has a scarcity mentality bred? Is the entire system changeable?
Are You For Sale? is supported by the National Performance Network’s Storytelling fund, Brown University Arts Initiative, Dance NYC’s Dance Advancement Fund and Creating New Futures.
Our managing producer is Michelle Fletcher, our production assistants are Jake Cedar and Camryn Stafford. The title of this podcast comes from a line in Morgan Parker’s poem “Welcome to the Jungle,” found in her book There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé (Tin House Books. 2017).
Photo by Marley Trigg Stewart
Miguel Gutierrez is a choreographer, composer, performer, singer, writer, educator, community agitator and Feldenkrais Method practitioner based in Lenapehoking aka Brooklyn, NY. He’s been called the “love-child of Chita Rivera and Yvonna Rainer” by David Parker in Dance Magazine. His celebrated work has been presented in New York, across the country and internationally in over 60 cities. He is a 2014 Whitney Biennial Artist and a recipient of a 2016 Doris Duke Artist Award. Recent projects include This Bridge Called My Ass, a performance that bends tropes of Latinidad to identify new relationships to content and form, and SADONNA: The Brown Ambition Tour where he re-interprets Madonna’s upbeat songs as sad anthems. Currently he is working on wearing the masc_k, a new album of original music and THE THINGS YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE, a collection of his writing. More info at miguelgutierrez.org