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Six dancers, two men and four women, are dressed identically in costumes designed by Shio Otani: blue crocheted jumpers and navy shorts. They perform on a completely empty, dark stage, dominated by Robert Cousins’ striking set design of white plastic bags that hang suspended from the ceiling above, resembling a cloud.

During the performance the bags fall from the ceiling, littering the stage floor. While they are a powerful symbol of waste and the impact of human beings on the natural environment, the plastic bags are also a compelling visual element and a way of “making moving air visible” (The Age, 2012). As they fall to the floor they become part of the choreography, caught up in the ebb and flow of the dancers’ movements.

Weather’s choreography is inspired by meteorological patterns; Guerin visited the Bureau of Meteorology as part of her research. The dancers embody various weather formations; blowing like leaves in the wind, arranging themselves in lines across the stage like advancing fronts moving across a weather map, forming chains that wind and unwind like isobars.

Weather explores both the effect of the weather on the human body and emotions, as well as the reverse: how human beings are changing weather patterns through the impact we make on the natural world. One of the dancers in the 2012 performances, Harriet Ritchie, was visibly pregnant; a poignant reminder of the world being left to future generations.

The score, created with composer Oren Ambarchi, is an important element. Rather than reflecting the erratic unpredictability of the weather, the music is unexpectedly rhythmic and “quite relentless, quite metrical” (The Age, 2012).

According to critic Simonne Michelle-Wells, “If the wind had a voice I’m pretty sure I heard it on Thursday night. The beautiful shapes and synchronicity of the dancers’ bodies as they bend to inescapable forces will stay with you long after you leave the theatre” (Australian Stage, 2012).

Weather represents Lucy Guerin’s return to pure dance, after several experiments combining choreography with text, improvisation and non-dance performers.

Watch this educational series of short films about the making of Weather (2012).

Collaboration: Dancer’s input, Choreographer’s Eye

Dancing ‘the state of air’

Dancing with design: the testing phase

Making Weather: Dancing in the clouds

Dress rehearsal - over to the dancers now

View a range of archival material related to this work in the LGI Digital Collection on the Theatre and Dance Platform at the University of Melbourne.

“The ideas underpinning this work stem from a desire to explore the possibilities of the human body’s connection to the elemental forces of weather.

The range of this subject is limitless and universal, but for me , weather has a natural expression through dance and movement. It can be defined as the ‘state of the air’, and in this work, this invisible drama is made visible through movement and design. The cause and effect of moving air to create pressure systems informs the choreographic structure of the work, and defines the dynamics and performance of the movement material.

Weather affects our mood, dress, food, activities, sports, conversations, architecture and our identity. Many works of art and literature have used the idea of a drought, a storm, the tropics or the icy outreaches of the poles to speak about the psychology of individuals, relationships or societies.

Making Weather has been for me a visceral immersion into choreographed movement and the body on stage. The motivation for the material has stemmed from the physical sensation and impact of the elements on the body, abstract representations of weather through maps and diagrams and our identification of human emotions with different weather phenomena.

It occurred to me many times throughout the process that the human body shares with weather the qualities of moving air, water, mist and heat, and that the air we breathe in and out becomes part of the weather at some stage.

In today’s world, weather is acting like a barometer for our environmental disasters. As the polar ice caps melt and the holes widen in the ozone layer, we have to accept that humans are now a factor in the creation and alteration of weather. Our actions have tipped the balance resulting in uncertainty in the ‘natural’ order of things.

The attempt by scientists to understand, record and predict the weather is only partially successful, and I think it is this ability to defy our logic and to overwhelm us with its force that ultimately draws me to this subject. This aspect of nature cannot be controlled or subdued and is a poetic reminder that we are not the masters of the universe.

Dance shares with the weather a resistance to easy interpretation. It is about force, direction, dynamics and form. But once the body stops dancing, nothing remains, and once the cyclone is still, we are left with only air. It is motion that brings them both into being.

This work has been a return for me to a focus on pure movement and the fascination I have for choreographing the human body. These exceptional dancers have contributed to both the choreographed and the improvised movement in Weather and without their willingness, superlative talents and belief in what we do, I could not have made this work.

The stimulating dialogue I have had with my design and music collaborators has also impacted strongly on the creation of this piece and I owe much to their having strong visions within their own practices to bring to this work.”

Lucy Guerin