“Pendulum” is a large-scale performance installation co-created by Australian choreographer Lucy Guerin and percussive artist Matthias Schack-Arnott. Commissioned by the Melbourne RISING Festival, it won the 2021 Green Room Award and was invited to major international art platforms such as the Venice Biennale.

The work breaks with tradition, constructing the stage with 39 precisely designed interactive pendulum installations that blend dance, sound, and installation art. Each bronze bell is equipped with speakers, light sources, and sensors. Under the dancers' manipulation, the pendulums generate real-time dynamic audio-visual feedback, including light effects and multi-layered soundscapes ranging from crisp chimes to deep hums.

During the performance, seven dancers engage in a dialogue with the pendulums through masterful technique. They interact by throwing, catching, halting, spinning, dodging, and resisting the swings, creating tension on the edge of control and chaos. The dancers must both counteract gravitational inertia and harness momentum to guide the oscillations, showcasing the interplay between precise control and spontaneous response—a testament to humanity's struggle against physical laws.

Through the dialogue between mechanical motion and dancers’ performance, the work explores the essence of time, gravity, and existence. The pendulum's steady, unstoppable motion symbolizes the objective passage of time and the constancy of physical laws, while the dancers' interventions and interactions artistically portray human's resistance to and adaptation of predetermined rules. Within this realm of perpetual motion, humanity's relentless effort to control the pendulum's ceaseless rise and fall reveals both the strength and fragility of the flesh against physical laws, while mirroring the human being’s quest for meaning within eternal flux.

Pendulum not only redefines the fusion of dance and installation art but also guides audiences through an immersive audio-visual experience, embarking them on a meditative journey exploring the essence of time and existence. Within this realm where machinery and life intertwine, everyone can find their own unique interpretation of time.

Lucy Guerin

Artistic Director

Award-winning choreographer Lucy Guerin was born in Adelaide, Australia, and graduated from the Centre for Performing Arts in 1982 before dancing with Russell Dumas (Dance Exchange) and Nanette Hassall (Dance Works). Guerin 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.

In 2002 she founded Lucy Guerin Inc (LGI) in Melbourne, to support the development and creation of new works with a focus on challenging and extending the discourse and practice of dance and building a vibrant community of dance artists.

Guerin’s works have merged with film, words, music, design, and visual art in collaboration with many other artists. New productions are generated through an experimental approach to the creative process. Guerin works towards creating small societies in her productions that devise their rules from the human body’s relationship to space, rhythm, and other people. The dancers are her primary collaborators.

Guerin has been commissioned by companies including Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project (USA), Lyon Opera Ballet (France), Chunky Move (Australia), Dance Works Rotterdam (Netherlands), Skånes Dansteater (Sweden), and Rambert (UK). Her awards include the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award, a New York Dance and Performance Award (‘Bessie’) and multiple Green Room, Helpmann, and Australian Dance Awards. In 2016, Guerin received the Australia Council Award for Dance, and in 2020 the Order of Australia (OA).

Lucy Guerin Inc

Australian dance company established by Lucy Guerin

Established in Melbourne in 2002 by Artistic Director Lucy Guerin, Lucy Guerin Inc (LGI) is an Australian dance company dedicated to challenging and extending the art of contemporary dance. The company has been based at its own venue, WXYZ Studios in North Melbourne, since 2018.

Renowned for the skill and originality of its small group of performers, LGI is dedicated to challenging and extending the art of contemporary dance. LGI realizes this in two ways. Firstly, through the creation of new dance works which regularly tour nationally and internationally. Secondly, by supporting the work of emerging and established artists through its wide-ranging studio programs at WXYZ Studios in North Melbourne. New productions are generated through an experimental approach to the creative process, and may involve voice, video, sound, text and design as well as Guerin’s lucid physical structures.

The company is a flexible model that values research and risk in the creative process and provides the conditions to question existing notions of dance. This is always a choreographic exploration, striving for visual, emotional and physical revelations that could not be generated or communicated in any other artform.

Over the last 21 years the company has evolved from a structure that enables Guerin’s choreographic projects, to an organization that also supports the development of independent dance artists in Melbourne. Through a program of residencies, classes, workshops, presentations and mentoring opportunities, it is responsive to the shifting ideas and contexts generated by dance and choreography in the world today.

Matthias Schack-Arnott

Artist, Composer and Percussionist

Matthias Schack-Arnott is an Australian artist, composer and percussionist, whose works span live performance, public art and installation. Over the last decade he has been building unique kinetic systems to create visceral and visually compelling sound worlds.

Described by The Guardian as ‘visually and sonically exquisite’, Matthias’ works have been presented by major festivals and contemporary art spaces including Sydney Festival, Melbourne Festival and The National Gallery of Victoria.

Matthias has worked with many pre-imminent musicians including Steve Reich (USA), Claire Chase (USA), Unsuk Chin (Korea), Zeena Perkins (USA) and as a performer has presented work internationally, including the Barbican (London), and Ruhr Triennale (Germany).

As a musician, Matthias has been a soloist and collaborator with many of Australia’s leading arts organizations, including Australian Art Orchestra and both the Adelaide and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras.