Place Dances, a new solo by Lucy Guerin, arrives at a significant moment. After twenty-five years as the founding Artistic Director of Lucy Guerin Inc, Guerin has announced that she will step down from the role at the end of 2026. In returning to perform herself for the first time in thirteen years, Guerin embodies what it looks like to remain a practising artist across a lifetime. Place Dances is a live reckoning with sixty years of dance thinking, made visible in the body that has done that thinking. For audiences — dancers and non-dancers alike — this is a rare chance to witness the full arc of a life in dance.
The October 2026 premiere at Buxton Contemporary marks the first iteration of what will be an ongoing research process.
‘I wanted to be a dancer from a very young age, and I started dance classes almost 60 years ago. When I went to my first ballet class at 6 years old, one of the first things I was taught were the 8 facings of the room. Numbered 1-8, they oriented the dancer in relation to a square room while dancing. From very early on, I learned to locate myself in space in relation to walls, floor, other objects, and other people. My body situated in an architectural frame gives me clarity and identity.
Place Dances locates me in relation to rooms, studios, theatres and galleries, but also in abstract and imagined places where the dancer might situate movement. As I continued my exploration of dance, I became more and more attracted to its ephemeral aspects. The dancer moving not with an imposed meaning or character, but as a vessel filled with a multiplicity of information, complex and fluid, and only visible through embodiment. I began to view the performance space as a place for creating nuanced moods and emotions that affect the viewer with a felt recognition. This led to a dialogue between working from an internal state that drew movement from within, and the outward boundaries of the space that surrounded
— Lucy Guerin
Place Dances begins in lecture form, reflecting on Guerin’s ongoing choreographic preoccupations with dance. It moves from a precise articulation of her work through language, into the physical expression through her body at a moment in time. It is not about the past, but about a present understanding of the effects of sixty years of dance thinking, making and doing.
Performances
Thursday 15 October 7:30pm
Friday 16 October 6:30pm w/ post-performance talk
Saturday 17 October 3pm and 7:30pm
Sunday 18 October 5pm
Buy tickets here.
This project has been supported by Buxton Contemporary at the University of Melbourne, the Sidney Myer Fund and Lucy Guerin Inc’s Commissioning Circle. This presentation would not have been possible without the generous support of the late Chloe Munro AO, Terry Wu and WXYZ Studios.
