Member Profile #12: Guta Hedewig

Name: Guta Hedewig
Website: www.gutahedewig.com
Hometown: New York, NY
Artistic Discipline: Dance
Fractured Atlas Member Since: December 2002
Fractured Atlas Services Used: Fiscal Sponsorship, Development Grants, Healthcare

Today, we’re featuring Guta Hedewig, founder and artistic director of Guta Hedewig Dance, an experimental contemporary dance company based in New York City that has been in existence since 1992. As Hedewig describes her company, “We are brainy, we are physical, and we enjoy slapstick-like humor. The company aims to engage audiences with pivotal philosophical questions in subtly comic ways. Our dances explore the quirks and contingencies of life that fall somewhere in between the transcendent and the immanent, the promised and the given.” Hedewig and her company has performed in a wide range of venues, from traditional theaters to international festivals, and from landmark alleyways to the streets of Spain. They also collaborate with artists of mixed disciplines in order to bring dance-based productions to a wide array of audiences.

Guta herself is originally from Germany, having moved to New York after studying with the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam and dancing in venues across Europe. She has since been described by the New York Times as a choreographer who, “has a gift for delicate movement with an iron core.”

We asked Guta a few questions about her company and its work….

What/who are your biggest influences?
“Buster Keaton, William Forsythe, classical music, and my wonderful dancers all inspire me greatly.”

What have been your greatest successes to date?
Guta sites the company’s most recent work, “Dog Days or 19 Ways of Looking at a Shrub,” as a very prominent success. She says of the work, “[It] is an outspoken political piece, utilizing Bushisms.” The show caught the eye of a Washington, D.C. political magazine as well as some right-wing websites. As Guta quips, “I felt that we reached the ‘right’ people!”

Finish this sentence: The artist’s role in society is….
“…. is to see clearly and then to communicate what we’ve seen clearly in ways that are accessible to
everyone, yet not obvious.”

How can we see, experience, or learn more about your work?
Guta recommends that you visit www.gutahedewig.com to further explore the company’s work and to find out more about their upcoming performances.