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AUDIENCE REVIEW: Laura Gutierrez's "In Tarps I Trust"

Company:
Laura Gutierrez

Performance Date:
February 22 - 24, 2024 @ DiverseWorks, Houston, TX

In Tarps I Trust
Choreography and performance by Laura Gutierrez
Lighting design by Nicholas Houfek
February 22 - 24, 2024
DiverseWorks, Houston TX

Freeform Review:

With the audience seated in the thrust, Laura Gutierrez enters and walks the parameter of the stage.  She is sleekly dressed in a black tank top and pants. Gutierrez settles, arm stretched overheard, against a vertical rectangle of light on the back wall.  The rectangle of light replicates in three additional locales in the theatre, revealing a ladder, overhead projector, and pile of folded billboard tarps. The lighting design by Nicholas Houfek is an equal partner to the choreography In Tarps I Trust.  It deftly highlights Gutierrez’s site-specific setup of the theatre.

The first object Gutierrez activates into the space is an overhead projector.  She circles around it meditatively focusing on shape. Gutierrez moves with sharp clarity in front of the projector, her enlarged shadow reemphasizes her motions.  The choreography is architectural, linear, and keeps an unexpected pacing.  Each action is complete, commanding and efficient.  She conjures memory, yet she avoids nostalgia. Instead, the projector amplifies the metaphor of transparency and states the first declaration of In Tarps I Trust.  This is about labor practices. The dance is the work.

When Gutierrez stands beside the projector, the light casts onto her with an empathetic glow.  She swipes her face across the top of the machine summoning visions of a Xerox replication.  A single transparency sheet is taken out of a folder and projected, an image of Gutierrez’s father as a young man standing in front of a billboard he painted.  It’s implied there may be more images in the folder, but no more are revealed.

For the second section, Gutierrez shifts to the ladder.  Her first action is putting on a neon orange sweatshirt.  An immediate visual link is made with construction work.  While this could easily seem like a costume change, it doesn’t. The sweatshirt is a functional uniform.

With curving, pressing actions, Gutierrez ascends the 8-foot-tall ladder, perching at the top with a high arched balance.  The moment is defiant and daring.  Next, she places her center across the top of the ladder, tensely scissors her legs, then releases.  Back to the floor, Gutierrez moves through a Judson Dance Theater-esque exploration of democratic weight sharing and balance. The ladder is handled with a measured, playful wit. The section peaks with a whirling, waltz as Un Dia A La Vez by Los Tigres Del Norte plays.  Gutierrez does not hide behind her abstract movement, as some choreographers do.  Instead the abstraction is her power, deeply considered and wielded with brilliance.

Gutierrez lays down and slowly puts on a red pair of socks to begin the third and final section.  Uniform is evoked again — a woman rolling on pantyhose or an athlete putting on a gear — the preparation of the body for a job.  Gutierrez leaps onto a pile of tarps with a gymnast’s flair, then performs a series of stunning off-kilter balances.  When she begins heaving the folded tarps onto the theatre floor, there is a palpable anticipation as they thud one by forming a horizontal line.  She throws some tarps back to where they came and leaves two onstage.

Exalted, Gutierrez unfolds the tarps and begins sculpting.  Her movement is quick and direct.  Tension builds as she rolls into, crumples, swipes, wrenches, pushes, and furls the gigantic tarps.  Choreography and task movement exquisitely merge as Gutierrez glides on top of a white tarp for the pinnacle dance sequence.  She finishes in stillness, eyes closed with arms extended low behind her.  She is reaching for support that may not be there. Gutierrez has laid bare the vulnerability and physical force of a job well done.

Author:
Rosie Trump

Photo Credit:
Tati Vice