Novacene

Novacene
2023

Company
National Youth Dance Company

Choreography
Wayne McGregor and Team in collaboration with the dancers

Costume Design
Grace Wales Bonner

Video Design
Ravi Deepres

Lighting Design
Cara Hood

Lighting Design Mentor
Lucy Carter

Music
A Winged Victory for the Sullen (originally composed for Atomos, 2013)
Jon Hopkins (originally composed for Entity, 2008)

Assistant to the Choreographer
Odette Hughes, Neil Fleming Brown, Louis McMiller, Catarina Carvalho, Rebecca Bassett-Graham and Winnie Asawakanjanakit

Originally danced by
Matthew Atkinson, Milly Bajpai, Krish Bhakerd, Jayda Dawkins, Samuel Defty, Gabriel Dunn, Alyssa Eve, Freya Hattam, Corlee Haverty, Alex Johnston, Ali Jones, Lucas Jones, Jewels Kemp, Charly Knights, Nic Lee, Meg Morgan, Phoebe Mufushwa, Kitty Newton, Blaise Noon, Ace Papworth, Beth Rogers, Aoibh Ryan, Lila Sefi, Venus Shury, Emma Staples, Judd Tucker, Lydia Uwanogho, Perry Wade, James Cale, Aimee Farrell, Jocelyn Johnson, Josie Linscer, Renée Miller-Reid and Maddy Westhead

Premiere date and venue
15 April 2023, The Lowry, Manchester, UK

In his role as Guest Artistic Director for 2022/23, Wayne McGregor created a brand new work for the National Youth Dance Company to celebrate the company's 10 year anniversary, Novacene.

On the inspiration behind Novacene, Wayne McGregor states: “My first solo work was commissioned by Dance Umbrella in the 90s and was titled CYBORG. I have always been fascinated by augmented humans, robots, hyperintelligence and more recently the capabilities of AI to supplement and evolve our physical and mental experience. The brilliant scientist and inventor James Lovelock has written a very provocative book on this subject: Novacene – our period of evolution today where cyborgs think 10,000 times quicker than we do and have the capability of programming themselves and their descendants in ways that will be beyond all human understanding. What is the future human? A Novacene CYBORG 2023.”

Novacene premiered at The Lowry, Manchester on 15 April 2023 and undertook a national tour visiting London, Ipswich, Plymouth, Leicester and Newcastle, featuring a performance at Latitude Festival in Suffolk.

Images: Ravi Deepres.