Studio Wayne McGregor

Wayne McGregor, in his role as Director of the Dance Department of La Biennale di Venezia, will announce the programme for the Biennale Danza 2023 on Monday 3rd April.

The announcement will be part of La Biennale di Venezia’s press conference announcing the 2023 programmes for Theatre, Music, Dance and the Biennale Colleges.

The event will be live-streamed at 11:30am CEST on www.labiennale.org and La Biennale di Venezia’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube channel. 


Image: Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia/photo by Andrea Avezzù

Launched in 2017, the PEER  mentoring programme for recent dance graduates offers a range of interactions with the Studio to further develop the skills needed to prepare for a portfolio career and to gain exposure to life as a professional dancer, alongside mentoring and development of a peer network. 

Introducing the 2023 PEER cohort who will be with us until August 2023:

Nya Bardouille
Nya Bardouille is a freelance dance artist and holistic movement practitioner from North London. As a Sports Science and Physiology graduate, she practices sports massage at Welbeck Health in Marylebone and is a physical therapist on the CAT scheme at The Place. Recent projects include US and EU tour with Jamie xx, Hang in There, Baby choreographed by John-William Watson and facilitator for NYDC. BODY LANGUAGE is Nya’s ongoing and bespoke practice of mind-body-movement management for dancers.

Lucy Clark
Lucy is a disabled dance artist with an interest in challenging boundaries between art and dance, and the places they can co-exist. She has become fascinated by the vulnerability held within her lived experiences of hidden disability and what happens when this is presented in a performative or multi-disciplinary context. Lucy is co-founder of fuse, an interdisciplinary collective creating performance art which is currently showing work in Oxford and London.  As a graduate from Trinity Laban, Lucy has worked with a number of well-established professionals including Stephanie Schober, Daniel Squire, Joel Brown, and has also trained externally with Candoco Dance Company, Stopgap, and Boy Blue to name a few.

Ruby De Ville Morel
Ruby De Ville Morel is a dancer, multidisciplinary artist and movement director, who recently graduated from Trinity Laban Conservatoire with a first class degree in Contemporary Dance. Rooted in the weird and wonderful, they aim to infuse their work with humour, joy and playfulness as they explore identity, queerness and fantasy. Drawn to storytelling Ruby's creativity is threaded with a sense of magic influenced by their childhood spent on the wild natural landscape of Dartmoor.

Maiya  Leeke
Maiya is a London based Contemporary Dance Artist. She is a Sadler’s Wells Young Associate 2023/24, was a finalist in BBC Young Dancer 2022, is alumnus of National Youth Dance Company working with Alesandra Seutin and has an MA from Northern School of Contemporary Dance. She is currently dancing for Candoco Dance Company working with Extended Play Dance, and continues to research her practice with Hawk Dance Theatre, Mimbre, and Alleyne Dance. 

Georgia Rowan
Georgia is a queer, interdisciplinary dance artist based in London. She trained at Iwanson International in Munich before completing an MA at LCDS in 2022. Alongside her movement practice in contemporary and commercial styles, her current research is concerned with connections between human nature, modern society, and myth. It is her aim to create work that challenges, reflects, and encourages conversation, working with professionals and the local community. 

Tom Sutton
Tom is from Middlesbrough and is currently in his graduating year of Rambert School training in Contemporary Dance and Ballet. He previously trained on the CAT program at Dance City in Newcastle and was a member of the National Youth Dance Company in 2019/20. He is particularly curious about the blending of both raw and technical movement to explore character and offbeat theatrical expression. 

Melanie Whitehead Smith
Melanie is dance artist whose practice finds itself in movement, film, theatre and research. Melanie’s work centres around club culture, queer identity and experiences of womanhood.  Graduating from Falmouth University with a First Class BA (hons) Dance and Choreography degree, she went on to work in music videos, short films, commercials and live performance. As a performer, Melanie has worked with artists including: Emeli Sande, Rag’n’Bone Man, Honne, Pride in London and Monica Nicolaides. 


Clockwise from top left: Nya Bardouille, Lucy Clark, Ruby De Ville Morel, Maiya Leeke, Georgia Rowan, Melanie Whitehead Smith, Tom Sutton, Georgia Rowan.

Saturday Classes @SWM is a new programme of creative movement sessions at Studio Wayne McGregor, led by a team of world-class teachers, open to all levels of adults and children aged 0-14.

Classes encourage play and curiosity in thinking through and with the body in space.

New to the Summer Term is Adult Fit to Dance, a high intensity exercise class focusing on articulation, strength, coordination and balance. Participants must be over 18.

REGISTRATION
Registration is now open for Summer Term, 22 April to 15 July 2023, and will remain open throughout the term.

Click the class below to register via Eventbrite:
- 10:00 - 10.45: 0-3 yrs 
- 11:00 - 12:00: 3-5 yrs 
- 12:15 - 13.15: 6-9 yrs & Adult Fit to Dance
- 15:00 - 16:15: Over 50’s Creative Movement
*No class on 3 June

COST
Full Term £120 (12 weeks) 
Half Term £60 (6 weeks)

FREE TASTER CLASS
We offer a free taster class for first time attendees. You can book your taster class via the Eventbrite links on the left for a Saturday of your choice.

ENQUIRIES
If you have any questions or require further information, please contact Jessie at jessie@waynemcgregor.com.


Image credit: Jack Thomson.

Join Company Wayne McGregor dancers on Saturday 22 April for a one-day lab exploring Wayne McGregor’s repertoire and creative processes.

The day will begin with an energetic and fast-paced contemporary technique class, followed by phrases from Company Wayne McGregor’s repertoire, with the remainder of the day focusing on Wayne McGregor’s creative tools, practices, and exercises, giving deep insight into his artistic process and an understanding of how Company repertoire is developed during a creation period.

The lab is suitable for professional dancers, graduates and students enrolled in professional dance training who are 18 and over.

BOOKING
The lab costs £80.

Please click here to book your place via Eventbrite.


Image: Rick Guest and Olivia Pomp.

We offer up to 10 places for professional dancers, graduates and students enrolled in professional dance training to join Company Wayne McGregor's morning class.

Sessions are fast paced, rigorous and highly technical, and are taught by a top dance professional at Studio Wayne McGregor, Here East in east London.

We currently have weekday morning classes available to book from Monday 6 March to Friday 28 April 2023, including ballet, contemporary and Cunningham technique classes. All classes run from 10:00am to 11:30am.

BOOKING
Classes are £8 each, and are offered on a first come, first served basis.

To book a class and for further information about the classes and teachers leading the session, please click here for dates in March and click here for dates in April.

If you have any questions or require further information, please contact studioteam@waynemcgregor.com.


Image: George Harvey.

Directed by Wayne McGregor, the Biennale College Danza is seeking sixteen dancers and two choreographers for a three month intensive programme during summer 2023.

Led by internationally renowned teachers, this unique initiative will immerse participants in classes of classical and contemporary technique, and workshops focused on repertory, the creative process, improvisation and new creations, including a re-staging of a historic work by Simone Forti (winner of the Golden Lion), exploration and development of a work by William Forsythe, participation in a new creation by Xie Xin commissioned specifically for the College, and production and shared experience of two new original creations conceived by the selected choreographers.

To apply and for further information, please click here.

The deadline for applications is 22 March 2023.


Image: XU Xiaowei.

Conciding with the school's centenary celebrations, Wayne McGregor has been announced as the new President of Elmhurst Ballet School, succeeding Sir David Eastwood.

The announcement forms part of an ongoing relationship between Elmhurst Ballet School and Studio Wayne McGregor. Since 2019 the relationship has enabled students to work with professional company artists and explore Wayne McGregor’s creative process and cutting-edge choreographic repertoire, including performances of excerpts of Entity and Atomos.

“Wayne McGregor is regarded as one of the world’s leading choreographers and today’s announcement is an exciting development for Elmhurst as the school celebrates and builds on its one-hundred-year legacy." - Jessica Ward, Principal of Elmhurst Ballet School.

 “I am thrilled to contribute to the vision and future programme of Elmhurst as President. The creative training of young dancers has been a career-long passion. As dance companies worldwide extend their repertoire, dancers need to be equipped with new skills that offer them the best chance to succeed.” - Wayne McGregor CBE.


Image: Rick Guest.

Join us on Friday 16 December for a unique opportunity to see the world-renowned Company Wayne McGregor in performance and celebrate 30 years of Studio Wayne McGregor.

This special Open Studio event will feature performances of Future Self by Company Wayne McGregor; opportunities to explore AI.SOMA, an AI-powered choreographic tool based on Wayne McGregor's choreographic archive; and viewings of sculpture inspired by dance.

The event is free but registration is required as places are limited. Please book your place via Eventbrite.

For further information, or questions about access, please contact development@waynemcgregor.com

We are grateful to Hackney Council for their generous support of our Open Studio events.


Image: Ravi Deepres.

Join us at Studio Wayne McGregor on Friday 9 December for an eclectic afternoon of taster workshops, films, interactive displays and guided tours of our beautiful, east London studio.

We are delighted to be offering free taster workshops in creative movement and wellbeing, ahead of the launch of our new public classes programme in January. 

Taster Workshops

3:00pm – 3:45pm: Creative Movement, adults class
Explore contemporary dance and creative movement. The class will start with a gentle warm-up, followed by creative tasks to encourage improvisation. No experience required. 

4:00pm – 4:45pm: Contemporary Dance, young people, ages 7-13
A dynamic class where young people will explore contemporary dance technique and learn new creative movement skills. No experience required. 

5:00pm – 5:45pm: Pilates, ages 18+
A gentle pilates class led by a Company Wayne McGregor alumna. No experience required. Mats are provided. 

Those attending will also be able to:
- See works by emerging talent from UCL’s Bartlett School of Architecture in our gallery area.
- Watch Atomos, a dance film directed and choreographed by Wayne McGregor; Wayne McGregor: Dancing on Edge, a documentary produced for BBC imagine…; and a selection of interviews and insights about Studio Wayne McGregor’s research and art/technology projects.
- Join a guided tour of our east London studio. 

The event is FREE but registration is required as places are limited. Please book your place via Eventbrite.

This event has been generously supported by Hackney Council.


Image: Jack Thomson.

Studio Wayne McGregor is offering an opportunity for five graduating students or recent dance graduates to become part of PEER, a unique professional development programme with us in January - August 2023.

The PEER programme will offer a range of interactions with Studio Wayne McGregor to further develop the skills needed to prepare for a portfolio career and to gain exposure to life as a professional dancer alongside mentoring and development of a peer network.

The programme is open to dancers in their final year of training who are about to embark on their professional career or who have graduated in the last year and could benefit from supported experience in the professional dance world.

Thanks to generous support from the Idlewild Trust the programme is free of charge to participants and there will be support for travel costs.

The deadline for applications is 16 January 2023.

For further information and to apply, please click here.


Image: Studio Wayne McGregor, Richard Davies.

Studio Wayne McGregor announces a rich, dynamic, and diverse season for 2022/2023, with four world premieres, two European premieres, the 30th anniversary of Company Wayne McGregor, and bold forays into the metaverse. 
 
Wayne McGregor brings Margaret Atwood’s post-apocalyptic vision to Toronto for the world premiere of MADDADDAMin November 2022, for the National Ballet of Canada in an international co-production with The Royal Ballet. The full-length ballet is based on the writer’s dystopian trilogy Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam, and features a specially commissioned score from Max Richter and bold costumes by Gareth Pugh. The Dark Crystal: Odyssey, a new production inspired by Jim Henson’s epochal 1982 dark fantasy film featuring the startling performers of Company Wayne McGregor, sees its world premiere at The Royal Opera House in May 2023. Carmen Herrera, an electrifying collaboration between Resident Choreographer of The Royal Ballet Wayne McGregor, The Royal Ballet, Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir and the late Cuban-American artist Carmen Herrera premieres at The Royal Opera House in June 2023.

The world premiere of Deepstaria, a Studio Wayne McGregor Original performed by Company Wayne McGregor, will be staged in Autumn 2023. It will simultaneously launch into the metaverse, using the latest AI technology, to exist across multiple dimensions as a shape shifting work in constant parallel communication with itself. This coincides with Studio Wayne McGregor’sground-breaking partnership with Niantic - the creators of planet-scale augmented reality games Pokémon Go, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite and Ingress - and Digital Catapult to develop an AR game that empowers users’ self-expression through movement, creating a real world metaverse. McGregor'sYugen– the evocative production inspired by Japanese Aesthetic theory – comes to the Dutch National Ballet for its European premiere in September 2022.
 
The Dante Project, enters the Paris Opera Ballet’s repertoire in its anticipated European premiere at the Palais Garnier in April 2023, following the rapturous critical acclaim of its world premiere with The Royal Ballet in 2021.

Revivals includes Tree of Codes, the trailblazing collaboration between McGregor, Olafur Eliasson and
Jamie xx, at the Esplanade Theatre in Singapore (October 2022), Obsidian Tear - McGregor’s first work ever created on an all-male cast - at the Arts Centre, Melbourne (September 2022) and Sydney Opera House (November 2022), Infra- McGregor’s abstract ballet created alongside British Artist Julian Opie - at the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre (September 2022), the Olivier Award-winning Woolf Works at The Royal Opera House (March 2023), and EDEN | EDEN with the Ballet Theatre Dortmund (April 2023) and Prague’s State Opera with the Czech National Ballet (April 2023).

2023 marks McGregor’s third year as Director of the Biennale Danza, International Festival of Contemporary Dance, the programme of which will be announced in April 2023. McGregor recently concluded his second year as Director with Boundary-Less, a radical and genre-defying ten-day programme of 160 artists, 69 performances and 9 world premieres that explored the limitless  possibilities of artistic collaboration and creation. 

Company Wayne McGregor, McGregor’s touring ensemble of highly skilled dancers, celebrates its
30th anniversary year in 2023. Since its inception in 1993, it has served as the creative instrument through which McGregor has evolved his distinctive style, explored his life-long scientific research into
movement, and realised the most experimental and superlunary of his works. A programme of events to mark this momentous occasion will be announced in the coming months. 

McGregor has been named Guest Artistic Director of the National Youth Dance Company for 2022/2023. He will work with forty young dancers from NYDC, continuing its legacy of nurturing the country’s brightest young talent,to create a new commission celebrating the company’s ten-year
anniversary in October 2023. 

Finally, ABBA Voyage, the revolutionary concert that launched the Swedish pop sensations back
onto the stage in May 2022 for an outstanding avatar performance choreographed by Wayne McGregor, is now booking for 2023. 


Image: Living Archive: An AI Performance Experiment, Company Wayne McGregor, 2019. Photograph by Cheryl Mann, captured at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Used by permission of the LA Phil.

To mark the 10 year anniversary of the National Youth Dance Company (NYDC), Wayne McGregor will be Guest Artistic Director of the company.

NYDC have begun their search this summer for the next intake of thirty young dancers aged 16–18 or up to the age of 24 for d/Deaf or disabled dancers to join the company who will work with McGregor to create a new commission from October. A final audition will take place at Sadler's Wells in London on 3rd September.

Of his appointment, McGregor says "it's fantastic to see NYDC leading the way in making sure that opportunities to take part in dance are open to everybody from all backgrounds, and from all around England. Together with my team at Studio Wayne McGregor, we are looking forward to training, mentoring, and creating opportunities and creative experiences for this fresh cohort of emerging talent."

Image: Pål Hansen.

Last month, as part of Wayne McGregor's Biennale Danza Festival, sixteen students from the Biennale College Danza performed a uniquely staged Merce Cunningham Event.

The Event comprised of excerpts from twenty of Merce Cunningham's works spanning six decades including choreography from the iconic Piazza San Marco Event. The students performed the Event on floating stages journeying through the canals in Castello, arriving at the Arsenale where an ourdoor 40-minute Event was performed.

Rehearsed and arranged by two seminal dancers of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company Daniel Squire and Jeannie Steele, the Event music was composed and performed live by Jlin with costumes designed by Matthieu Blazy for Bottega Veneta, continuing the tradition of Cunningham’s cross-artform collaborations.


Image:
La Biennale di Venezia - Biennale College Danza 2022 Event, 2022.
Choreography by Merce Cunningham © Merce Cunningham Trust.
All rights reserved.
Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia © Andrea Avezzù.

Studio Wayne McGregor is joining The Niantic Lightship Augmented Reality Accelerator as a challenge owner to develop an AR game to empower users’ self-expression through movement and create a real world metaverse. While other conceptions of the metaverse bring people into an online world, Niantic’s Lightship Developer toolkit is using technology to bring people together outside, encouraging real-world connection rather than isolation.  

Established by Niantic, the technology company behind Pokemon Go, and the UK authority on advanced digital technology, Digital Catapult, The Niantic Lightship Augmented Reality Accelerator programme will tap into the UK’s network of immersive start-ups and studios. It aims to lower the barrier to entry for developers to create immersive AR experiences, and enable immersive start-ups to bring virtual content into the real word.

Studio Wayne McGregor is looking for developers to create pitches that encourage players to move through urban environments using AR. The successful organisation will collaborate directly with Wayne McGregor and technical experts at Niantic and Digital Catapult to bring their concept to life.

“At Studio Wayne McGregor, we have always been committed to exploring the ever-inspiring relationship of new technologies and human performance - powered by physical intelligence. This unique collaboration with Niantic and Digital Catapult allows us to dream bigger and venture further into our evolving metaverse(s), visioning a new kind of shared creative adventure that untethers the imagination. We know that deeply engaging with movement gives us an intimate insight into what it is to be human and expands our understanding of our place in the world. This project provides everybody with accessible tools to tap into their innate creativity, to connect playfully with others and to explore their bodies and spaces they inhabit in surprising, limitless ways.”

Wayne McGregor CBE 

For further information about The Niantic Lightship Augmented Reality Accelerator, and to apply for the Open Call, please visit: Digital Catapult

Image: Rick Guest and Olivia Pomp

imagine... profiles arguably Britain's most groundbreaking dance pioneer. Alan Yentob joins Wayne over a creatively intensive few months as he takes on the role as the first British director at the Venice Dance Biennale, originates an AI inspired production with Company Wayne McGregor, and rehearses and premieres The Dante Project – his latest major collaboration with visual artist Tacita Dean and composer Thomas Adès, rapturously received at the Royal Opera House.

Featuring interviews with some of his closest collaborators, imagine… explores Wayne's ascent from his childhood in 1970s Stockport, to disco then rave fan, to champion of contemporary dance – via the Chemical Brothers, Radiohead and his hero, Merce Cunningham’s, questioning spirit. The programme also follows Wayne’s first live streaming experiments in 1997, sequencing his own genetic code, and choreographing the long awaited ABBA Voyage concert using the latest in motion capture technology.

The programme will broadcast on BBC One on Monday 21 February at 10:35pm and will be available to watch on BBC iPlayer after transmission.


Image: Angel Li / © BBC Studios