Lucy Guerin Inc & Matthias Schack-Arnott PENDULUM + How To Be Us

Choreographer Lucy Guerin brings in percussion artist Matthias Schack-Arnott to operate 39 golden pendulums that swing through the air in fluttering and visceral sweeps of sound and light to which the performers respond in a hypnotic dance with gravity.  

Lucy Guerin has been creating bold work for over 20 years. From New York – a mecca of dance where she started out in ballet and later branched out – to her native Australia where she is one of the national treasures, the talented choreographer has carved an impressive career.  

Past works include the film noirish dance Motion Picture and a collaboration with the Ballet de L’Opéra de Lyon. Pendulum, created with percussionist artist Matthias Schack-Arnott, falls into both performance installation and live performance. Intently engaged, the performers wander around an expanse of sonic and luminous pendulums which they manipulate in a constant dialogue. Pendulum gradually picks up momentum as the moving bodies are seemingly pulled into a continuum. This piece – initially conceived for a gallery space – features Lucy Guerin’s own repetition-meets-trance movement language. Pendulum is an entrancing piece of choreography.  

Philippe Noisette 

In this exhilarating duet, the dancers integrate meticulously choreographed movements into their improvisations to explore how we find personal freedom in a highly regulated world.  

How To Be Us is the second work presented at Chaillot by the choreographer, a beautiful dance offering performed by Lilian Steiner and Samantha Hine. For Lucy Guerin, the two dancers approach improvisational technique in a spirit of openness and generosity. How To Be Us is a duet for two women that integrates improvised movement devised by each dancer with strict patterns and formal structures directed by the choreographer. It aims to “explore questions of liberty, both individual and communal, in the context of a world that is torn apart by its conflicting ideas of freedom.”

Synchronized gestural movement, one of Guerin’s greatest strengths, is here complemented by intense sensibility. The choreographer is equally skilled at creating work for actors or a dance duet like How To Be Us. In her own way, Lucy Guerin tackles perpetual motion.  

Philippe Noisette