- Lucy Guerin moves on
Lucy Guerin, director and founder of the Melbourne-based contemporary dance company Lucy Guerin Inc, will step down from her position at the end of 2026. Guerin established her company 25 years ago and, while 25 years is a more than commendable time to have been at the helm of a dance company, the news came as something of a shock. Guerin said of her decision:
After 25 years, I have decided to step down as Artistic Director of LGI to explore new directions in dance. I founded the company in 2002 to support the making and touring of my productions, but over the years it has become so much more than that. It is now a centre for choreography, discussion, learning, connection and ideas and there are so many who have worked incredibly hard to support this organization. I am deeply grateful to all of them
Guerin will continue to lead the company until the end of 2026 and will perform a solo work in October before relinquishing her role as director. The LGI Board will begin a search for a new director in the coming weeks. It will be interesting to see who will be selected to take on the position vacated by Guerin, and what new role Guerin will take on in the future.
For posts about Lucy Guerin on this website follow this link.
- Adelaide College of the Arts
I had the pleasure of being in Adelaide recently where I saw a performance by dance and design students from Years 2 and 3 at the Adelaide College of the Arts. The evening consisted of two original dance works, Made to_ by Singaporean guest choreographer Ru Ma, along with there & gone by Peter Sheedy, lecturer and course co-ordinator for the dance program at the College.
The students performed exceptionally well in both works although I especially admired the Sheedy work. It was a thoroughly abstract work making great use of onstage objects that were moved around the stage at various times. It also had the dancers constantly regrouping in various ways and was in fact an exceptional way of introducing students to the various possibilities of choreography. A great training piece although the dancers performed like professionals rather than students in training.
- News from Loughlan Prior
Loughlan Prior’s production of Hansel Gretel, made originally for Royal New Zealand Ballet in 2019, has just recently been performed in Las Vegas by Nevada Ballet Theatre. It was really well received there and was described in one review as a ‘spectacular, surreal imagining’ of the well-known story with ‘stunning visual design’ and ‘high energy choreography’.
Read Jennifer Shennan’s review of the work as seen in Wellington in 2019 at this link, and also her review of the 2023 return season at this link.
Prior is currently working in London on a new show, The McRae/Vassiliev Project, in collaboration with director Natalie Abrahami, dancer and choreographer Steven McRae, musician Vasko Vassilev, and dancer Sarah Lamb. Inspired by the work of violinist Niccolo Paganinit, it will premiere in September in the Linbury Theatre at London’s Royal Opera House.
See more about The McRae/Vassiiev Project at this link.
- Beth Dean
I quite accidentally came across a small manuscript collection of material about Beth Dean held in the National Library in Canberra (MS 10011, received 2004). I was always under the impression that her collection was held in Sydney at the State Library of New South Wales, and indeed there is a substantial collection there. But somehow a small number of items found their way to Canberra. It was a thrill to find some early photographs of Dean, which I had never seen before.
But especially interesting, given that several years ago now (and without being aware of the NLA material), I had given a paper on dance in Australia in the 1950s. My talk focused on Australian themes and, not surprisingly, my mention of Dean included a brief discussion of her choreography to John Antill’s score Corroboree. So, I was especially interested in Dean’s writings in the NLA collection regarding her extensive research for her production of Corroboree, and the story as she conceived it. Of her approach to the story she wrote:
The story of my “Corroboree” was about a young boy and his initiation, and his facing of himself and of the chimeras of our fears and our imagination. The Dreamtime stories of his ancestors are shown to him, as they were when we sat in the red dust with those people during all their ceremonies.
And of her background research she wrote:
For my version of the ballet I had spent those months [on which she elaborates at length elsewhere in the papers] living with the Aboriginal people studying their mythology, but even more finding the beauty and the depth of their discipline.
It is totally fascinating material, provided we look at it as coming from the 1950s.
- Press for June 2026
– ‘Opera Gala (Snow Concert Hall ).’ Review of Opera Gala. Limelight Magazine, 1 June 2026. Online at this link.
– ‘Physicality fuels Sydney Dance Company’s engine.’ Review of Engine, Sydney Dance Company. CBR CityNews, 25 June 2026. Online at this link
Michelle Potter, 30 June 2026
Featured image: Portrait of Lucy Guerin. Photo: © Amber Haines
I was very interested to read your appreciation of the Beth Dean papers you have recently been looking at.
I met Beth and her husband Victor Carell at the stunning Dance Studies residential schools, organized by Peggy van Praagh at the University of New England in Armidale, NSW in 1967 and again in 1969. We became instant friends and they were very good to me, starting with a ride back to Sydney, then in a friendship that lasted over ensuing decades. Beth and Victor were editors of Australasian Dance and they invited me to send reports from London. where I went for my first big OE in 1970. Those were my first published reviews and I am still at it, these 56 years later.
I was invited to join their so-called Carell Commando — a group of volunteers to help in their various projects – the first and most spectacular being the inaugural South Pacific Festival of Arts held in Fiji in 1972, where they were co-directors. That was a life-changing experience for me. The following year they staged a program of Pacific dance as part of the Opera House opening festivities and I was again privileged to be in the C-Commando for that grand affair. Beth introduced me to Makin Corrie Tekenimatang, the cultural leader of the Banabans, a Micronesian people living on Rabi Island in Fiji who had been forcibly removed from their homeland so we ( British, Australian and New Zealand governments) could have unfettered access forever to the massive phosphate deposits of their tiny home island. It is one of the scandals of 20th century Pacific history ( see One Fine Day, by Matthew Parker) – and Beth’s encouragement for Makin to form the Banaban Dancing Group, which survives to this day, was of enormous benefit to their survival of identity. (I edited a book, One and a Half Pacific Islands – stories the Banabans tell of themselves VUP, 2005 – and Beth contributed an article to that. There has recently been a digital edition of the book also released.)
A few years ago a couple of tired academics whose names I forget visited my home to interview me about the Carells. It soon became evident they had an agenda to profile them posthumously as cultural colonials who had intervened negatively in various aspects of Pacific dance and cultural practice. Nothing could be further from the truth of how I perceived their many projects — starting with Dust for the Dancers, their book relating their 1950s experiences in Central Australia among Pintubi people – from which Corroborree grew — then in Papua New Guinea, and the resulting book Softly Wild Drums. I could list 25 more projects they undertook.) I insisted that my name be nowhere mentioned within their revisionist writing about Pacific Arts Festivals which I found tedious humbug in the extreme.
Isn’t the point of all our research, writing and reading thereof, that the time and context of where it took place or was produced be taken into account. How can it be otherwise? If anyone reads this Comment in 56 years time, will they say that I was tilting at windmills, or just trying to contribute to the record of a remarkable gracious, pioneering and tireless couple who helped and encouraged me enormously, in Maori and other Pacific dance research. Beth and Victor had no children. Our first born, Beth, is named for Beth Dean Carell. .
Thanks so much Jennifer for your thoughts on the Carells. It is a moving comment and I agree wholeheartedly that context, especially that of time, is a significant aspect we should always consider. I clearly remember rumblings (sometimes rather loud) when I was giving the paper I mentioned in my dance diary post. But someone from the ‘rumbling group’ told them to be quiet because she was interested to hear what I was saying. She had a particular strength of character in the group so they all shut up.
I was originally going to do an individual post on Beth but so much else was happening at the time that I ended up just adding her to the June dance diary. The thought of an individual post is still there.
As my good friend John Mansfield Thomson would often quote — “If you wear bright plumage people will take pot shots at you”.
Beth ran rings around many mumblers and rumblers, and just carried on with her work..
Her several books still speak to us, especially South Pacific Art and Dance which she co- authored with Bruce Palmer of Fiji Museum, published 1972 in tandem with the first Pacific Arts Festival. It too was in my opinion the best of the many festivals that followed. The two visitors I previously mentioned had read none of Beth’s books yet wanted to bring her down — though failed in the attempt..