Lucy Guerin will return to the stage for the first time in 13 years with Place Dances, a new solo presented at Melbourne’s Buxton Contemporary from 15 to 18 October.
The premiere comes shortly before Guerin steps down as Artistic Director of Lucy Guerin Inc at the end of 2026. She founded the company in 2002 and has spent 25 years developing it from a structure for her choreographic work into a centre for contemporary dance, research and independent artistic practice.
Her return to performance is closely connected to that transition. Speaking to Dance Australia in June, Guerin said her responsibilities as Artistic Director and CEO had gradually taken her away from her own dancing.
“I have a strong desire to revisit my physical self and see what’s going on there,” she said.
Place Dances draws on almost 60 years of physical experience, beginning with Guerin’s first ballet classes at the age of six. Its point of departure is the eight facings of the classical ballet studio, the numbered directions used to position a dancer in relation to a square room.
From that early spatial map, Guerin considers the many studios, theatres and galleries through which her practice has developed, alongside less tangible places created through movement and imagination.
“Place Dances locates me in relation to rooms, studios, theatres and galleries, but also in abstract and imagined places,” Guerin said.
The work begins with the knowledge accumulated in a dancing body and the difficulty of fixing an artform that exists in motion. Guerin describes the dancer as a vessel containing multiple forms of information, made briefly visible through performance.
That premise carries particular significance at this point in her career. Guerin has spent decades choreographing on other bodies, collaborating with dancers and establishing the structures through which new dance can be made. Place Dances returns the focus to her own physical practice and to the changes, memories and habits held within it.
Guerin is the work’s choreographer and performer. Kate Davis joins the creative team as dramaturg and costume designer, with sound design and composition by Alisdair Macindoe and lighting by Paul Lim.
Following her departure from Lucy Guerin Inc, Guerin plans to continue working independently through new commissions, residencies and workshops. Her recent productions will also continue touring in 2027 and 2028.
After 25 years building a company around choreography, Guerin is returning to the most immediate scale available: one dancer in a room, working out where she is.