Miguel Gutierrez
Closing night

In the form of a cabaret concert conceived as a poignant homage to his icon, Miguel Gutierrez reinterprets Madonna’s big successes in a melancholic way, accompanied on stage by the Slutinos (“The Sad Latino Boys Backup Singers”). From effervescence to sadness, the affective displacement which he produces here gives an additional spirituality to pop hits, which were initially calibrated to make crowds dance and, by doing so, radically renews the listening experience. Run through with delicacy and fragility, and delivered without any superfluous artifice, his interpretation is so vocally impressive that it quite literally suspends times. In the process, the show weaves an underground, intimate connection between the star from Michigan and the choreographer from New Jersey, the better to seal their shared destiny, that of people born to their professions who still conserve from their origins the same vague melancholy, always concealed beneath an apparent joyfulness.

A multidisciplinary artist, choreographer, performer and musician, Miguel Gutierrez blurs the boundaries between genres and disciplines as part of an artistic strategy to explore both the conventions of performance and the outlines of contemporary identity. In his colourful shows, such as Last Meadow, which revisits the American imagination, HEAVENS WHAT HAVE I DONE, myendlesslove, Age & Beauty, DEEP AEROBICS (performed at the CN D in Camping 2017), Cela nous concerne tous (This concerns all of us) for Ballet de Lorraine (2017) and This Bridge Called My Ass (2019), he produces an endless procession of queer bodies defying norms and conventions.