DEAN MAYO DAVIES talks to The Royal Ballet’s Resident Choreographer about his ‘making world’ where a life in dance and a long fascination with science come together to create extraordinary art

That movement is an accelerated language of our living bodies, something elementary, is a fervent belief of Wayne McGregor, and a fascination he has had from an early age. For him, it is not a question of whether one is interested in dance, but rather how can one not be?

As a choreographer he has enjoyed great creative freedom, unbound from convention or expectation: his most astonishing collaborations have involved cognitive neuroscientists, anthropologists and technologists. He is probably one of the only artists to have worked (separately) with minimal music composer Steve Reich and fashion designer Thierry Mugler. He is extremely protective of the creative spark.

Company Wayne McGregor, his touring ensemble of dancers and the instrument through which McGregor has evolved his distinctive style, celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. Since 2006, he has been Resident Choreographer of The Royal Ballet – the first from a contemporary dance background. Far from resting on his laurels, there is a palpable feeling of an artist just hitting his stride.

‘I’m evangelical about dance, not just my dance,’ says McGregor, who is regularly commissioned by (and has works in the repertories of) Paris Opera Ballet, New York City Ballet and Bolshoi Ballet. ‘I want to be in a “making world” where there are extraordinary people making extraordinary things.’

As Guest Artistic Director of National Youth Dance Company for 2022/23, working with 40 young dancers, McGregor is committed to inspiring the next generation. He is simultaneously undertaking his third year as Director of Biennale Danza 2023, the International Festival of Contemporary Dance in Venice, where he can galvanise other choreographers.

McGregor is speaking at breakfast hour from Palm Springs in California’s Coachella Valley. Framed over Zoom by a lucid blue sky, he wears a white T-shirt printed with a black graphic, and a square-shaped ring on his left middle finger, distinct for the black panels running along each side. These details are telling, since there is a shared aesthetic between the way he dresses and the stylistic staging of his studio works. 

McGregor’s impromptu week in Palm Springs is to be spent working, the change of environment and hit of sunshine traditionally a creative’s balm. He spent the previous month in Toronto, where the writer Margaret Atwood acted as creative consultant on MADDADDAM for the National Ballet of Canada. An international co-production with The Royal Ballet, the work combines Atwood’s dystopian trilogy Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam under the dramaturgical hand of Uzma Hameed. It continues McGregor’s historic collaboration with two vanguard talents: composer Max Richter, fabled for twice recomposing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and Gareth Pugh, a design creative lauded for his sculptural fashion-as-art.

‘I’ve had a month in the studio with the dancers and I’ve made about two-and-a-half hours of movement material, which is a lot,’ says McGregor. ‘I’ve got all of Max’s musical ideas and themes and I’ve got the dramaturgical ideas and themes – soon I’ll start looking at what the relationships are between all the things we have. This week I’ll really think about the organisational principle, before going back into the studio for the final two months.’

Collaboration is fundamental for McGregor. It is a creative discipline which can unlock great things and without it he would not have such a brilliant archive. Chroma (2006), for instance, is set to music by Jack White (of The White Stripes) with minimalist set design by architect John Pawson. Communicating the extremes of thought and emotion, it was a watershed work in the history of ballet and cemented McGregor’s status as a trailblazing force in contemporary dance.

‘Collaboration is totally intuitive,’ says McGregor. ‘For me to be in what I call my flow state, my state that is most free, I have to be with collaborators who are not blocking the chi. I had the most brilliant collaboration with Tacita Dean [who designed the set and costumes for 2021’s The Dante Project], which was dazzling because we had so much time together. Collaborations are all about time because you have to get into the other person’s world. On a human level, there’s got to be a relationship built, some energy exchanged.

‘I try to work with people that I’ve worked with for a long time and bring in a new voice for particular projects,’ he continues. ‘I’ve worked with Max for 20 years. It’s a real dialogue. His music has lit a torch underneath so many people who listen to it: he has more than a billion streams on Spotify, which is incredible. There’s something about that layer of sonic integrity, that musical brilliance that accesses really deep, emotional content for us. It makes us feel his world but at the same time see our own world reflected in it.

‘Another thing I love in collaboration is someone pushing me to think differently about what I do. Gareth [Pugh] always gives me a physical challenge – often many! – to deal with. Atwood’s story features genetically spliced characters – part-pig, part human – called pigoons... you can imagine our pigoon is extraordinary,’ he laughs. ‘Usually I invite people to work with me, but unusually Gareth, through his shows or films, has invited me to work with him, giving me a task or something to resolve. I’ve been on the other side of it, I think that’s why we have a lovely connection.’

Lighting designer Lucy Carter and filmmaker Ravi Deepres are even longer-term collaborators. ‘Lucy has done all of my ballets and Ravi has done pretty much all of them,’ McGregor says. ‘The quality everyone shares is adaptability: it’s about allowing the fixed point to be as late as possible, so discovery can happen. There’s got to be room for magic. It’s your responsibility as an artist to explore.’

Royal Ballet fans will also probably be aware of McGregor’s longstanding partnership with former Principal Edward Watson, with whom he has worked for more than 25 years. His final role before retiring as Principal was as Dante in McGregor’s The Dante Project, which McGregor created for him. ‘He was a young dancer when I first started at The Royal Ballet,’ says McGregor. ‘In a ballet company you have the luxury of working with a dancer over a much, much longer period of time. With Ed there was incredible possibility.’ 

Through McGregor’s love of science he created a new paradigm: one where dance meets technology. It stems from hours as a child spent coding on his Texas Instruments computer. ‘I was always fascinated with the idea that zeros and ones could make and activate things,’ he says. ‘There’s something interesting in the elegance of numbers.’ McGregor spent months choreographing 2022’s ABBA Voyage, the much-publicised real-life concert experience of avatars, which has been extended until 2026. ‘I think that was part of my interest in doing the project,’ he muses.

His fascination with science is evident in his work for Company Wayne McGregor. The 2017 work Autobiography is a dance portrait inspired by the sequencing of McGregor’s own genetic code, created by a shifting algorithm that showcases 23 sections of choreographic events, reflecting the 23 pairs of chromosomes of the human genome.

He is also teaming up with Niantic, creator of augmented reality game Pokémon Go, for the upcoming Studio Wayne McGregor work Deepstaria. Inspired by the deep sea, the collaboration ‘allows us to dream bigger’.

‘People ask where I get my inspiration,’ says McGregor. ‘I just love interfacing science and philosophy, that’s where I’m naturally gravitating. But I’m not dealing in a prediction of the future: we are living in this world.’

McGregor’s take on The Dark Crystal – a new dance production inspired by Jim Henson’s 1982 cult dark fantasy film – sees its world premiere at the Royal Opera House in May. It will be followed in June by a new work, a collaboration with the late Cuban-American artist Carmen Herrera, who sold her first painting at 89 and died last year aged 106.

‘When I was working at American Ballet Theatre, I used to pass an anonymous, grey door every day that fascinated me, for some reason,’ says McGregor. ‘Fast-forward a year... I’d called Carmen, explained I was a huge fan and that I’d love her to do a stage set. She invited me to visit... and I arrived at the same grey door – she lived on the top floor of the building. I mean, that is really amazing to me.’

Herrera sent through a fully realised design within weeks. ‘She was excited to see the work realised on that scale,’ says McGregor. ‘I’m delighted that I had one-on-one time with her. She was still exploring at that age.’

Meanwhile, McGregor has been working on a book, Physical Thinking. ‘I’ve always wanted to capture what I think about dance- making but through the lens of physical intelligence,’ he says. ‘There are techniques that everybody, not just dancers, can work on to communicate better. If you think about your physicality, the way you read others, and the way you can position your body to be read, it will help you – with everything. You’re going to have an easier, more joyful life.

WAYNE McGREGOR
TEXT DEAN MAYO DAVIES
PHOTOGRAPHY PAUL SCALA
ROYAL OPERA HOUSE MAGAZINE, SUMMER BOOKING PERIOD 2023
COVER STORY