Wayne McGregor (Choreography)
Wayne McGregor
(born 1970) is a British choreographer of contemporary modern dance. His work is
highly distinctive in its vocabulary of movement, for its integration of dance
with film and visual art, and for his active interest and incorporation of
computer technology and biological science. He is the Artistic Director of Wayne
McGregor Random Dance, Resident Company at Sadler's Wells Theatre in London; the
Resident Choreographer of The Royal Ballet, appointed 2006; and the government’s
first Youth Dance Champion, appointed 2008. In 2004 McGregor was a Research
Fellow in the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of
Cambridge.
McGregor is a frequent
creator of new work for La Scala Theatre Ballet of Milan; Paris Opera Ballet;
Nederlands Dans Theatre of La Hague; San Francisco Ballet; Stuttgart Ballet; New
York City Ballet; The Australian Ballet of Melbourne; and English National
Ballet of London. He served as Movement Director for Harry Potter and the
Goblet of Fire.
McGregor was born in
Stockport, England, in 1970. He studied dance at Bretton Hall College of the
University of Leeds and at the Josй Limon School in New York. In 1992 he was
appointed Choreographer-in-Residence at The Place, London, and in the same year
he founded his own company, Wayne McGregor Random Dance. McGregor evolved what
was to become his distinctive choreographic style on Random Dance.
His choreography is an
extrapolation of his own movement vocabulary: "[It] had its origins in
McGregor’s own long, lean and supple physique and in his body’s ability to
register movement with peculiar sharpness and speed; at one extreme McGregor’s
dancing was a jangle of tiny fractured angles, at the other it was a whirl of
seemingly boneless fluidity."
It was during his major
trilogy The Millennarium (1997), Sulphur 16 (1998) and Aeon (2000) that the
company became a byword for its radical approach to new technology –
incorporating animation, digital film, 3D architecture, electronic sound and
virtual dancers into the live choreography. Collaborations with leading
multi-disciplinary artists enriched the company’s futurist aesthetic and
dramatically enlarged the possibilities of dance. In 2001 it was invited to be
the first resident company at the new Sadler’s Wells. McGregor was named one of
"25 to Watch" in 2001 by Dance Magazine.
His career to date has
also taken him beyond the conventional stage, choreographing for films such as
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, creating site-specific installations for
Southbank Centre’s The Hayward, The Saatchi Gallery, the Houses of Parliament
and for the Pompidou Centre in Paris. Collaborations with artists outside of the
dance field have included composers Sir John Tavener, Scanner, Plaid and Joby
Talbot/The White Stripes, animatronics experts, Jim Henson’s Creature Workshop
and neuro-scientists and heart-imaging specialists. McGregor was the first to
curate, in September 2008, the 3-day long new festival for the Royal Opera
House, Deloitte Ignite. This came 18 months after his successful Royal Opera
House production Chroma (2006).
McGregor was appointed Resident Choreographer of The Royal Ballet in December
2006, the first since Kenneth Macmillan. His productions for The Royal Ballet
include the award-winning Infra (2008), Limen (2009), Live Fire Exercise (2011),
Carbon Life (2012) and Machina for Metamorphosis: Titian 2012 (2012). In 2009 he
presented a new staging of his La Scala production of the opera Dido and Aeneas,
alongside Acis and Galatea (this marked McGregor’s Royal Opera debut). He also
directed Sum for The Royal Opera (2012).
Recently McGregor has
created Entity (2008), FAR (2010) and UNDANCE (2011) for Wayne McGregor | Random
Dance, as well new work for Australian Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, New York City
Ballet and Paris Opera Ballet. In 2013 he will create a new work for San
Francisco Ballet and a new Rite of Spring for Bolshoi Ballet.
McGregor was appointed
Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2011 New Year Honours
for services to dance.
from wikipedia
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