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.
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.
This project is supported by Buxton Contemporary at 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.