DQC 25-YEARS
De Quincey Co 25-year Celebration
SUNDAY 9 NOVEMBER 2025, 2 – 6pm
Rex Cramphorn Performance Research Studio
De Quincey Co is closing our doors this year and for our final event we wanted to make a celebration of the exchange between so many awesome people – artists, designers, producers, technical-magicians, AI & admin-geniuses, accountants extraordinaire, our fabulous board alongside our wonderful audiences – all of whom have shaped the work of those 25 years.
Our wonderful comrades at Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Sydney very generously offered ‘the Rex’ to us to do so – the place where we have developed the majority of our performance works as well as many research labs and has been such a home for us. We were however strictly limited by the venue capacity of 100 – otherwise we would have invited ALL of you!
Assoc Prof Ian Maxwell was co-host with Tess de Quincey for an event in 2 parts with refreshments in between. We collated 1300 images from a variety, although by no means all, the company performances by photographers including Russell Emerson, Paris Spellson, Heidrun Löhr, Mayu Kanamori, and Vsevolod Vlaskine. These were presented on 3 iMac screens in the space when our guests arrived.
Short performances were presented by Linda Luke & Kraig Grady, Tess de Quincey & Jim Denley and by Peter Fraser who made a dance in two parts: Papunya Plants with a sound excerpt from Stockman 1 by Rik Rue; and Nancarrow with a sound excerpt from Study No. 6 [for player piano] by Conlon Nancarrow.
Tess presented a short visual and spoken summary of DQC’s history using a small selection of performances to highlight the various ways the company’s extensive body of work covered a wide range of themes and forms, but also engaged in a long term investigation of how Places inhabit and shape us, alongside a series of works focussing on the fragile boundaries and troubled turbulent instabilities of disturbed and marginalised psyches; but how all the works were determined by collaborations with a very wide range of disciplines, not only artistic but reliant on many different technical aspects of expertise, and all the unseen, unsung heroes who enable the work to come into being.
Ian Maxwell hosted Body Weather Essences as experienced by different people – both written in and presented on projection as well as by those who spoke. There was a panel of speakers who each presented a prepared talk: Martin del Amo, Clare Grant, Jessie Meaney-Davies and Nicola Heywood who were unexpectedly joined by Tom Davies who performed a response as to what Body Weather essence is, as well as by Russell Emerson who talked without any preparation. Some of the talks as well as the slides of the written contributions are available for download below.
Refreshments and a glorious grazing table with a lot of vivacious mingling and exchange! The food was prepared by Tess’s housemates and friends Yuliia Kondratova, Helen Tran, Ihor Markevych, Zanzi Mann and Clara Mason.
After Peter Fraser’s performance which started Part 2, longtime journalist and dance reviewer Jill Sykes spoke to anecdotes from Peter’s and the company’s works.
We were thrilled to then screen for the first time PARA PARRA – site of conscience, a suite of 4 videos by Martin Fox, from our place-based work developed at the Female Factory Precinct. The first two pieces Smoke March and Laundry were then followed by Linda and Tess speaking to the experience of being at the Female Factory, after which the following two segments Isolation Cells and Guardians finalised the evening’s presentations. We have received remarkable feedback praising this work which we hope will break new ground in the future.
The event was a wonderful milestone. Now the final wave.
Through 25 extraordinary years of training, research and performances, the company has developed a large and distinctive body of work, from the desert to the city, of intercultural performances and installations, in intimate as well as large-scale works. We have co-evolved through cultivating these practices, fostering a community, training and seeding younger generations of explorers in Body Weather, and grown a vital living practice and conversation challenging how we understand bodies, environments and places.
A HUGE THANK YOU to our myriad dancers and performers who have joined us from all over the world; to our artistic and scientific collaborators from so many disciplines – from architects to musicians, meteorologists to visual artists – who trusted and gave so generously; to the fabulous riggers, production managers, lighting designers and sound techs who all worked their butts off with a smile; to all the web designers, project managers, producers, IT advisors, accountants and administrators, and to all DQC board members over 25 years without whom we could not have done any of this and who have enabled our work to come to fruition. You have made this such an AMAZING JOURNEY!
We look forward to what Tess and other Body Weather artists will be doing, and how they and the practice will co-evolve into the future.
Photos by Ian Hobbs
Image courtesy of Phillip Mills
DOWNLOADS:
Body Weather Essences – 4 ‘slides’ of written contributions
Body Weather Essences – Clare Grant
Body Weather Essences – Nicola Heywood
This project was supported through a residency at Theatre and Performance Studies, The University of Sydney
