March 26, 2003 -

OTTAWA -- One of Australia's hottest exports, choreographer Lucy Guerin (who also spends half her time in Manhattan) burns up the stage in the Theatre of the National Arts Centre on Tuesday April 8 at 20:30. In an exploration of duality, divergence, and creative tension, multiple award-winner The Ends of Things bounces between reason and chaos, and Melt, an intensely physical new duet, contrasts extremes of temperature and extremes of temperament.

This performance by Lucy Guerin Company is part of the NAC's Dance Series B, which is sponsored by The New RO Cable 6.

"In [The Ends of Things] Guerin demonstrates both depth and complexity, using current styles of movement, sound and design to reflect on deeper social issues."

Hilary Crampton, The Age, Melbourne Australia October 23, 2000

"...one of the finest pieces of contemporary dance, local or imported, seen here for a long time."

Neil Jillett, The Sunday Age, Melbourne Australia, October 29, 2000

Lucy Guerin Company is known for a unique movement sensibility performed by a group of outstanding dancers. Based in Melbourne, Australia, the company is committed to developing new works which then tour internationally. Guerin's work connects her individual and often inorganic choreography to ideas and formats that directly resonate with an audience. This has produced a challenging dialogue in her works between an instinctive approach to movement and clarity of conceptual presentation. Guerin's choreography acknowledges the theatre as an invented, separate world where reality is altered. It is not familiar, but connects to an essential human experience in a way that illuminates and transforms.

Lucy Guerin has been developing dances since 1989 in New York City and Melbourne, with this clash of cultures inspiring many aspects of her choreography. Her dance vocabulary owes much to her experience in both places, drawing on both her Australian ballet training and current New York downtown dance. Born in Adelaide, she danced in Dance Exchange and Danceworks before moving to New York in 1989. During her seven-year stay, Guerin performed with Tere O'Connor Dance, the Bebe Miller Company, and Sara Rudner, and she was a recipient of numerous fellowships. In 1997, she presented Two Lies, for which she was awarded a New York Dance and Performance Award (the Bessie) for choreography; Two Lies and Incamadine were then launched on a European tour. She has been commissioned by the White Oak Dance Project to create a duet, Soft Center, for Mikhail Baryshnikov and Raquel Aedo and to remount Two Lies on the company. Other companies commissioning her work include Chunky Move, One Extra Dance Company, Dance Works, Tasdance, Ros Warby, and Woo Co (Denmark). The Ends of Things (2000) premiered in Melbourne, winning numerous awards; Guerin also received the 2000 Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award for achievement by an individual. Based in Melbourne, she continues to present her work in New York and abroad.

The Ends of Things centres on a man whose life, as he understands it, is drawing to a close. His world is reduced to a small room in which he continues his mundane daily activities with fastidious monotony, remembering in fragments the life that is behind him. These scenes of regret and missed opportunities are represented by three dancers who encroach upon his world, collapsing the boundaries between reason and chaos, and consigning him to the borderless expanse of the stage and beyond.

Melt is a new work currently in development. An intricate duet for Stephanie Lake and Ros Warby, it follows an extreme temperature trajectory from freezing to boiling. These extremes of temperature will be examined physically and emotionally, and will be supported through light and sound. Beginning in a frozen landscape with a sparse, minimal score, a progressive change in temperature transforms the stage to a boiling and intense pinpoint of movement, sound, and colour. An intensely physical work, it will draw a connection between change in temperature and shifting temperament. The duet also examines timeless images of people in landscapes of extreme temperature and how these environments work upon the mind. Tropical heat may reflect a seething, fevered brain (e.g. Kurtz dying in the Congo in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness) or a frozen landscape may indicate a despairing interior desolation (Mary Shelley's Frankenstein escaping through an icy wasteland). These parallels connect our inner selves to our surroundings in extreme psychological circumstances.

Lucy Guerin Company performs in the Theatre of the National Arts Centre on Tuesday, April 8, 2003 at 20:30. Tickets are $37, $34, and $27, and $19.25, $17.75 and $14.25 for students (upon presentation of a valid student ID card). Tickets are available at the NAC Box Office (in person) and through Ticketmaster (with surcharges) at (613) 755-1111; Ticketmaster may also be accessed through the NAC's website at www.nac-cna.ca. Last-minute tickets (subject to availability) for full-time students are $9.50 at the Live Rush Centre in the NAC Foyer after 18:00 on the day of performance only, upon presentation of a valid 'Live Rush' card.

Photos for all dance events can be viewed and downloaded at: www.nac-cna.ca/media/

Information:
Gerald Morris
Marketing and Media Relations,
NAC Dance Department
(613) 947-7000, ext. 249
gmorris@nac-cna.ca