From Down Under, a working-class dance

Lucy Guerin’s choreography gives new meaning to fall and recovery

Australian choreographer Lucy Guerin danced here for seven years in the early ’90s and has toured internationally for a decade. She’s visiting us with two recent works, each not quite an hour long. The first, “Corridor,” played last week at the Baryshnikov Arts Center to great acclaim; the second, “Structure and Sadness,” opens Thursday at Dance Theater Workshop.

The beautifully designed dance uses six people and many rectangles that range in size from your basic 4-by- 8 plywood sheet to slightly larger than a playing card. The performers begin in work clothes, building a house of cards that eventually sprawls across the large space, while duets, solos and ensemble dances unfold in rectangles of light. The dancers use industrial materials — ladders, boards, elastic cords — to experiment with balance and torque.

Not to spoil the surprise, I’ll say only that the award-winning piece commemorates the collapse of Melbourne’s Westgate Bridge in 1970, an event that resonates as powerfully in Australian history as 9/11 does in ours. Both abstract and specific, backed with a fascinating projection of rods of light, “Structure and Sadness” is everything new dance should be and seldom is: physically and intellectually engaging, elegantly designed and socially aware.

Lucy Guerin Inc.
‘Structure and Sadness’
Thursday-Saturday, 7:30 p.m.
Dance Theater Workshop
219 W. 19th St.
$12-15, 212-924-0077
www.dancetheaterworkshop.org