Australia Dancing - Guerin, Lucy (1961

Guerin, Lucy (1961 - )

Bird, Ross: Portrait of Lucy Guerin, c. 2000

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Born in Adelaide, Lucy Guerin studied dance with several teachers, including Kay Cranwell and Rex Reid, before beginning a two year dance course at Adelaide's Centre for Performing Arts (CPA). She graduated from CPA in 1982 and began her professional dance career in 1983 in Sydney with Russell Dumas' company, Dance Exchange. In 1988 she moved to Melbourne and danced for Nanette Hassall in Hassall's company, Dance Works. In 1989 Guerin moved to New York and spent the following seven years until 1996 dancing with a range of companies and choreographers including Tere O'Connor Dance, Sara Rudner, and the Bebe Miller Company.

While in New York Guerin began to make her own work, beginning with solos for herself and then moving on to group pieces. Her work was presented in a range of venues in downtown New York including The Kitchen and Dance Theatre Workshop. In the mid 1990s she was selected to take Solemn Pink and then Incarnadine (1996) to the Rencontres choreographiques internationales de Bagnolet in France. As a result she was awarded the Prix d'auteur to create future works and to tour Europe, which she did between 1997 and 1998. In 1996 Guerin was awarded a Bessie (New York Dance and Performance Award) for choreography for her work Two Lies, which was later taken into the repertoire of Mikhail Bayshnikov's White Oak Dance Project.

Other works Guerin has choreographed include Sweet Dreams (1989), In Endless Description (1991) in collaboration with Sarah Perron, Ghost in Bloom (1994), Venus Bay (1996), Remote (1997) commissioned by One Extra Dance Company, Robbery Waitress on Bail (1997), Heavy (1998), Zero (1999) commissioned by Chunky Move, Soft Centre (1999) a duet commissioned by the White Oak Dance Project, The Ends of Things (2000), Living with Surfaces (2001) commissioned by Ros Warby, Melt (2002), Tell Me (2003) a collaboration with Michael Lenz, Tense Dave (2003) commissioned by Chunky Move in collaboration with Gideon Obarzanek and Michael Kantor, Plasticine Park (2003) in collaboration with Patricia Piccinini, The Firebird performed in conjunction with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in 2003, Baroque Masterworks for the Australian Opera (2004), Aether (2005), and Love me (2005). Structure and Sadness, based on the construction and collapse of the Westgate Bridge, premiered in October 2006 as part of the Melbourne Internaional Arts Festival.

Guerin established Lucy Guerin Inc. in 2002. She has received several Green Room Awards, and in 2000 was the recipient of the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award for achievement by an individual.

Bibliography:

Guerin, Lucy, 'Working with Sarah Rudner', Writings on Dance, 8 (Winter 1992), p. 42; Jonathan Marshall, 'Documents in Australian postmodern dance: two interviews with Lucy Guerin', Australasian Drama Studies, 41 (October 2002), pp. 102-133. The appendix to the aformentioned article includes company and artist chronologies for Lucy Guerin, Ros Warby, Trevor Patrick, Rebecca Hilton, Philip Adams, Gideon Obarzanek, David Tyndall, Fiona Cameron, Stephanie Lake, Brett Daffy, Louise Taube, Shelley Lasica, Sandra Parker, Jo Lloyd, Helen Herbertson, Margie Medlin, Danceworks, Company in Space, Rosalind Crisp, Garry Stewart, Alison Halit, Anna Smith, Angharad Wynne-Jones, and Tom Wright.

Research Materials

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Find more about Guerin, Lucy in:

Internet - Google
Collection - OzLife
Articles - New York Public Library Dance Collection
Pictures - Picture Australia