Becomings and Belongings: Lucy Guerin’s The Ends of Things

What is the first thing we remember when we finish watching a piece of choreography? Is it the agile technicality of the dancing bodies? Might it be the narrative that the choreography has constructed for us? What about the extraneous material such as the costumes, the lighting, the décor? Or could it be the assumed ineffability and transcendence of the dance? I believe that we remember an amalgamation of all of the above, yet cultural practices and codes inform, structure, and ultimately define such memories. As such, dance should not be dismissed as a prima facie aesthetic, but as an art form that develops, becomes, and by extension belongs (in)to polyvalent cultural constructions. Moreover, these constructions cyclically illuminate the culture, and the choreographic process, thereby multiplying the readings of the dance itself. I present these musings as a preamble to this paper and its reading of Australian choreographer Lucy Guerin’s piece The Ends of Things (Melbourne, Australia, October 2000). Through a mixture of performative description and writing, theoretical inquiry, and commentary on the choreography, I suggest how The Ends of Things might be an example of choreography that grapples with how subjects—fictional ones in the piece and Guerin’s own identity as a choreographer—engage with becoming and belonging. I will utilize postmodern philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s idea of becoming and Elspeth Probyn’s provocative conceptualization of belonging as ways to theoretically read the choreography, as well as to consider Guerin’s own identity as an Australian choreographer in the twenty-first century.