Wayne McGregor

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McGregor, 2008

Wayne McGregor CBE (* 1970 in Stockport ) is an English choreographer .

life and work

McGregor discovered his passion for dance at the age of 8, inspired by films like Saturday Night Fever and Grease . Modern and classical ballet were initially beyond his imagination; he started out with disco and Latin American dances.

McGregor studied at Bretton Hall College , where he graduated in both choreography and semiotics . He then continued his education at José Limon's school in New York . In 1992 he returned to England and founded his own company, Random Dance .

As a dancer, the lanky McGregor soon became known for his extreme agility and his unorthodox, surprising, sometimes extremely fast and yet precise movements. He also expresses these skills, athleticism and the element of surprise in the performances of his company. In his productions he tries to express topics from the human sciences, genetics , robotics and cognitive science in dance.

With the help of a satellite transmission he staged a simultaneous performance of two dance groups in Berlin and Canada in 1997. In 2000 he broadcast his production Trilogy over the internet. The subject of his 2004 production Ataxia was incoordination . In order to let his dancers experience them realistically, he put prismatic glasses on them. For Amu , his 2005 production, he sent them to the cardiologist to have their hearts recorded. The knowledge of one's own inner life, according to his thesis, would also have an effect on the external expression of a person and their dance style.

He created the choreography for the 2005 film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire . His 2006 production Chroma won Olivier and Critics' Circle awards.

Since 2006, McGregor has been resident choreographer at the Royal Ballet in London. He is innovator in residence at the University of California at San Diego . Random Dance was appointed resident company at the renowned Sadler's Wells dance theater in London.

With his production Entity he toured Europe with Random Dance in the spring and summer of 2008 and also made guest appearances in various places in Germany, including at the Pacemaker Festival in Aachen . Entity deals with the duality of intention and instinct in movement and with questions of artificial intelligence . In 2009 he won the Movimentos Dance Prize of the City of Wolfsburg in the Best Choreography category with this piece .

In 2009 he was selected as the best choreographer by specialist journalists on behalf of the magazine ballet-tanz . In the same year his productions Dyad 1929 for the Australian Ballet and Dyad 1909 for Random Dance and Lymen for the Royal Ballet were created .

In 2010 he created Outlier for the New York City Ballet . In July 2010 his production Yantra was premiered by the Stuttgart Ballet .

For his services to dance, he was named Commander of the Order of the British Empire at the beginning of 2011 . In the same year he choreographed the music video Lotus Flower for the band Radiohead . In May 2011 his choreography Live Fire Exercise was performed at the Royal Ballet in London .

In July 2012 he created the big dance performance Big Dance Trafalgar Square with 1,000 performers as part of the London Festival . In 2013 he choreographed Atomos for Random Dance, Raven Girl for the Royal Ballet and Borderlands for the San Francisco Ballet .

He created the choreography for the music video for the Chemical Brothers' Wide Open , released in 2015 . Wayne McGregor's first full-length work for the Royal Opera House ballet also premiered in 2015. For the three-part ballet evening Woolf Works , which is based on three novels and the life of the writer Virginia Woolf , he worked with the composer Max Richter . A DVD version of the production was released in 2019.

On April 14, 2018, the Bavarian State Ballet presented the ballet evening Portrait Wayne McGregor with the three choreographies Kairos , Sunyata and Borderlands at the National Theater in Munich to kick off the 2018 Ballet Festival . The piece Sunyata was a world premiere with a composition by Kaija Saariaho .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Announcement in the program of the Stuttgart Ballet, visited on July 7, 2010.
  2. ↑ London Gazette . No. 59647 , December 31, 2010, p. 8 .
  3. ^ Wayne McGregor - About. ( Memento of December 7, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Biography at Random Dance, accessed on December 5, 2013.
  4. ^ Woolf Works. The Royal Ballet. Royal Opera House, London, 2017, accessed April 25, 2020 .
  5. ↑ "Woolf Works" - A ballet conception for literature by Virginia Woolf . Meeting with Nicole Strecker at SWR2 Treffpunkt Klassik , May 2, 2019

Web links

personal data
SURNAME McGregor, Wayne
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English choreographer
DATE OF BIRTH 1970
PLACE OF BIRTH Stockport