A pioneer in the use of new media and digital technologies on stage, English choreographer Wayne McGregor has garnered international attention in less than two decades. In 1992, at a young age, he founded Random Dance in London, the same year he was appointed resident choreographer at The Place. Ten years later, in 2002, his company was chosen to reside permanently at Sadler's Wells, London's most important theater. Today, at thirty-five, Wayne McGregor has conquered Europe, Asia, and North America with his shows. He has created works for historic and important ensembles such as the Rambert Dance Company, the Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company, the Stuttgart Ballet, the English National Ballet, and the Royal Ballet in London.
The secret of his success? A high-pressure mix of professionalism, research, and innovation. A unique quality of movement distinguishes his gestural vocabulary from the authors of his generation: clarity of movement combined with great speed, continuous disarticulations opposed to a fluidity that seems to arise from the 'deboning' of the body, very young dancers ready to embody his energetic, snappy, and breathtaking style. Added to this is the very current experimentation with new technologies applied to the stage. Since 1997, when he conceived 53 Bytes, a performance simultaneously performed in Berlin and Canada and seen by spectators via satellite, McGregor has explored the frontiers and potentials of computers by collaborating with animation experts and creators of virtual worlds in 3D. This is seen in works like Sulphur 16 (1998), where the dancers appeared diminished by the presence of a virtual giant and many digital figures that snaked among them like visitors from another era, or in Aeon (2000), where digitally created landscapes transported the dancers to other worlds and dimensions.
Technology is also explored in different ways, as highlighted in Nemesis (2002), where attention is focused on the 'machine' as an extension of human potential. This is embodied by long metal prostheses attached to the dancers' arms, transforming them into sounding androids on stage. With AtaXia, his latest production for ten dancers from the company born in 2004, McGregor delves into neuroscience. The work stems from research conducted by five scientists from the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Cambridge on ataxia and the English choreographer's fascination with investigating the mind/body relationship. In medical jargon, ataxia means 'lack of coordination of voluntary movements,' and in the show, this translates into an exploration of disorder and loss of control.
Assisted in the creative phase by Sarah Seddon Jenner, who is affected by this disorder, McGregor discovers new ways of movement in exploring dysfunction: he creates a disjointed, altered, insane, and brutal dance to the original music of Michael Gordon, Trance, performed by the revolutionary English group Icebreaker - unique in the combination of instruments such as mouth accordion, sax, electric violins, guitars, percussion, and keyboards. Equally intriguing is the stage setting built with the interferences of computer graphics and the films of John Warwicker from the famous Tomato collective, so poignant and calibrated as to lead into the chaotic universe of an uncoordinated mind, and the refined lights designed by Lucy Carter that impeccably envelop the dance and its content.
