COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

Two Lies (1999)

LUCY GUERIN

A SCREENING AND DISCUSSION SERIES FOCUSING ON SIGNIFICANT DANCE WORKS FROM OUR COLLECTIVE PERFORMANCE-PASTS.

Date: THURSDAY 20 APRIL, 2023
Time: 7pm – 8:30pm
Price: Pay what you can (Temperance Hall values this event at $15)

Courtesy of the Artist is a screening and discussion 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.

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.

ABOUT THE WORK

Two Lies was the first work produced by 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

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 and 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, the 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

Image Credit: Two Lies by Lucy Guerin, photography by Johan Elbers

ACCESS AND SAFETY

Please do not attend Temperance Hall if you are feeling unwell. You can find more information on what Temperance Hall is doing to keep COVIDSafe here.
Temperance Hall has unisex bathrooms and their is an accessible bathroom on the ground floor of the building.
If you have any specific accessibility needs or general queries regarding the event, please contact Temperance Hall Program Producer, Anna McDermott program@temperancehall.com.au

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.