Skip to Content

The Arts Intel Report

Pendulum, by Lucy Guerin

A moment from Pendulum.

Jan 18–20, 2024
1 Pl. du Trocadéro et du 11 Novembre, 75116 Paris, France

For the recent Pendulum, the Australian postmodern choreographer Lucy Guerin and the percussionist Matthias Schack-Arnott have hung 39 temple bells from the rafters nearly to the floor. As the seven dancers set the pendulums swinging, the bells sound in long, low notes and flash white in the darkened theater. The effect is trance-inducing as well as ominous. The dancers slide under the clanging, brightening chaotic bells or stand in a neat column to propel the bells forward in a swinging canon. The short female-female duet that completes this “Go Australia!” program proceeds by a similar method, subjecting a limited number of steps to accumulation and permutation, to an inexorably dramatic end. —Apollinaire Scherr