A SCREENING AND CONVERSATION SERIES FOCUSING ON SIGNIFICANT DANCE WORKS FROM OUR COLLECTIVE PERFORMANCE-PASTS.
Courtesy of the Artist is a screening and conversation series focusing on significant dance works from both the recent and not so recent past by living masters in our community. Caring for the ephemeral artefacts of our dance histories and herstories, to revisit a moment in time and ask what was happening for the artist and the world at that time - perhaps as a way to look at where we are now. Join us to witness and reflect on this significant moment from our collective performance-pasts and join in a conversation with the featured artist.
Courtesy of the Artist is curated by Temperance Hall's Artistic Associate, Luke George, as part of the Care Tactics 2021-23 program of workshops, screenings, talks and artistic development. Find out more HERE.
Following on from the epic durational performance installation, NEWRETRO (Australia Centre for Contemporary Art for FRAME: A Biennial of Dance) that reconstructs fragments retrieved from Lucy Guerin Inc’s back-catalogue, Lucy Guerin joins curator Luke George in the screening of one of her first works, Two Lies.
TWO LIES
Two Lies was the first work produced by Lucy Guerin after she returned to Australia following seven years of working in New York. Originally called Courtables 1966 when it debuted at Gasworks in Melbourne in 1996, the work was renamed Two Lies and performed at The Kitchen in New York City in 1997. Two Lies received critical acclaim in New York and won Guerin a Bessie (New York Dance and Performance Award) in 1997.
Two Lies examines the paradox of memory and how experiences are stored and revised by subsequent events. The work explores concepts of duality, with the three dancers performing the same work twice.
The first time the dance is performed in a contracted square of light with small minimalist movements and stiff pale dresses. The second time the sound is amplified, the space expands, the dresses are silky and saturated with colour, and the movement is lush and large. It is both amusing and disturbing, presenting two sides of a story to reveal the deceiving aspects of recollection.
Director: Lucy Guerin
Choreographer: Lucy Guerin
Dancers from Premiere: Lucy Guerin, Rebecca Hilton, Ros Warby
Composer: David Chesworth
Lighting Designer: Margie Medlin
Costume Designer: Lucy Guerin
Performances:
4 September, 1996
Premiere, Gasworks - Melbourne, Australia
10-13 April, 1997
The Kitchen - New York City, USA
Film screening date:
Thursday 20th April 2023, 7pm – 8:30pm
Venue:
Temperance Hall
199 Napier Street, South Melbourne, Victoria
Price:
Pay what you can (Temperance Hall values this event at $15)
Contact: program[at]temperancehall.com.au for more information. Click the button to book or call Temperance Hall (03) 9645 9937
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING...
“The elegant crystalline structure tugs against the enigma of these women.”
- Review by Deborah Jowitt for The Village Voice, 29 April 1997
“Ms Guerin commands attention with her forcefulness as both a dancer and a choreographer”
- Review by Jack Anderson for The New York Times, 14 April 1997
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Born in Adelaide, Australia, Lucy Guerin graduated from the Centre for Performing Arts in 1982 before joining the companies of Russell Dumas (Dance Exchange) and Nanette Hassall (Danceworks).
She moved to New York in 1989 for seven years where she danced with Tere O’Connor Dance, the Bebe Miller Company and Sara Rudner, and began to produce her first choreographic works.
Guerin returned to Australia in 1996 and worked as an independent artist, creating new dance works including Two Lies (1996) Robbery Waitress on Bail (1997), Heavy (1999) and The Ends of Things (2000).
In 2002, she established Lucy Guerin Inc in Melbourne to support the development, creation and touring of new works with a focus on challenging and extending the concepts and practice of contemporary dance. Recent works include The Dark Chorus (2016) Split and Attractor (2017) and Make Your Own World (2019).
Guerin has toured her work extensively in Europe, Asia and North America as well as to most of Australia’s major festivals and venues. She has been commissioned by Chunky Move, Dance Works Rotterdam (Netherlands), Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project (USA), Lyon Opera Ballet (France), Skånes Dansteater (Sweden) and Rambert (UK) among many others.
Her awards include the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award, a New York Dance and Performance Award (a ‘Bessie’), several Green Room Awards, three Helpmann Awards and three Australian Dance Awards. In 2016, Lucy received the Australia Council Award for Dance.
Find out more about Lucy: https://lucyguerininc.com
Images: Two Lies by Lucy Guerin, photography by Johan Elbers
Temperance Hall acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the land in which we dance and create, the Bunurong Boon Wurrung peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation, and pay our respect to Elders both past and present and, through them, to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.