A participatory ritual designed to put a piece of art in the ground for good

When: February 3
Where: Live Arts Los Angeles, 4210 Panamint Street, Los Angeles, CA 90065
Price: $20

Tags: #dance, #participatory, #performanceart

Event Link

Choreographer Miguel Gutierrez stages a one-time, participatory event “ that puts one of his celebrated dance works, DEEP AEROBICS, to permanent rest.”

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Press Release:

LOS ANGELES, CA — Los Angeles Performance Practice (LAPP) presents Miguel Gutierrez, a world-renown choreographer unafraid to confront the limits of his form. Saturday, February 3, 2018 at Los Angeles Live Arts, Gutierrez performs K-D-A-VER, a one-time only participatory event that puts one of his celebrated dance works, DEEP AEROBICS, to permanent rest. That work, which has been seen in Paris, Brussels, Helsinki, Montpellier, will not be seen in Los Angeles. It will never be seen again. K-D-A-VER is a ritual that puts past artistic intentions deep in the ground. Audiences are encouarged to come prepared to participate (or not), and in a costume (whatever that means to them).

“You must kill all your darlings.” — William Faulkner

K-D-A-VER is the fulfillment of an artist’s dream, a one-time solo performance that goes beyond merely killing a darling of a work, to kicking its corpse. One decade ago, Gutierrez shamelessly invented and began disseminating his popular participatory performance DEEP AEROBICS, a protest-cum-workout that has been presented around the world. Short for Death Electric Emo Protest Aerobics, it was a one-hour-plus workout — a communal / political / conceptual / imaginational experience that gave audiences permission to embrace their resistance, express transformative rage and generate a therapeutic sweat.

Since its inception, Gutierrez wrote that
“he hopes to soon destroy the technique, because it’s just too hard to teach,
and really the world is going to hell in a hand basket anyway.”



Now, with brazen honesty and wit, Gutierrez confronts his artistic intentions. His self-critique becomes our critique, as he abandons his efforts to generate the pleasures of resistance that gave DEEP AEROBICS its life. For one night, he picks the bones of a past work, lays a shroud over its hopes, and invites us to witness a ritualized death to the joys of the past.

Made possible with generous funding from the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF), California Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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