Danceworks 2012 (Photo by Mike Peters).

What is dance? This question is consistently on my mind during each dance performance presented by Montclair State’s Department of Theatre and Dance, and Danceworks 2012 was no exception. Seven pieces in a variety of styles were performed, each created by equally unique types of choreographers and artists. 

One piece that was especially striking was entitled we love you get up, directed and choreographed by Chase Brock. This piece was not so much a dance in the conventional definition of the word as a theater piece with dance and other elements integrated into it. There were dancers, yes, but there were also actors involved who helped to tell a more definite story than that in some of the other dance pieces, whose plots and stories were often open to interpretation. we love you get up began with a beautifully staged image of what appeared to be different families in pairs or small groups. Everyone on stage was dressed in the same color scheme—white or gray with some kind of red accent. We then heard actor Michael Joel reciting a Frank O’Hara poem entitled “Poem [Lana Turned has collapsed!].” Joel focused on the language of the poem, and the mood was suddenly set because we were hearing about how icon Lana Turner really did collapse; it was a bit spooky but still sentimental. When different lines of the poem were being read, dancers would emerge from the big picture on stage, literally, and embody the words. Each pair had its own story, and it was very fluid and calming to watch. 

The poem was repeated several times and often ended with the phrase, “Oh Lana Turner, we love you, get up.” Each time this phrase was repeated by an actor, it had a different tone. Actor Ryan Eakins, for example, was looking straight out into the audience when he said this, and it felt as if he was disappointed in Lana Turner for falling down and that she would be embarrassing herself and everyone around her if she didn’t get up. Eakins had a fierceness in his eyes that told Lana Turner she was pathetic for falling down. It was a very strong and specific moment that was different from the moments some of the other actors had. Ian Callahan had moments of desperation while begging for the help of others in trying to find someone of whom he had only a photograph. He was still reciting O’Hara’s poem, but in a way that was more urgent than the way Michael Joel, who was much more grounded, spoke. Both the actors and dancers, though, told the story of a huge icon crumbling to the ground as her loved ones, who had their own stories, surrounded her in mourning and loss. 

What do you think of when you picture a legendary icon or event that has had a monumental effect on millions of people? What comes to your mind when you imagine someone or something crumbling to the ground as millions of people watch? 

Kaitlin Overton is an undergraduate student at Montclair State University.

(Photo by Mark Garvin.)

The words “Gaga” and “fame” have become fused together in the pop culture lexicon ever since Lady Gaga’s debut album was released in 2008. Being a twenty-something pop music lover, my first thought when I heard about a “Gaga People” movement workshop at the Kasser Theater was whether I should wear my meat dress or my Kermit the Frog poncho. But Lady Gaga this was not. The “Gaga” in question refers to the movement language, developed by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin, in which performers reintroduce themselves to the sensations of their bodies, allowing them to find their own natural and fluid movement. The workshop was led by Saar Harari, one of the founding members of the Brooklyn-based dance company LeeSaar The Company, on campus at Montclair State to premiere FAME as part of the Peak Performances spring season. 

“The first rule is we don’t stop,” announced Harari. With that, the hour-long Gaga workshop began. We started by trying to “float” instead of allowing gravity to keep our energy rooted to the floor, which soon enabled me to feel a light and lively natural physical state. Moving forward, the workshop focused on the exploration of different aspects of our body, such as remembering that our skin and bones are two separate entities with two separate movement lives, as well as noticing the sensation of our skin in relation to things such as our clothes and using that sensation to inform movement. 

“Be as silly with your movement as you can,” instructed Harari. We experimented with size and speed, swinging arms and extending legs, making ourselves first as large as possible and then as small as possible; all the while, an emphasis was placed on being authentic in the movement. Being authentically silly can be a challenge by the time you’ve been socially structured to be so damn serious, but in moments of authenticity, beautiful and unique movement started to emerge. 

That night, after the workshop, I got to see the Gaga technique in action in the company’s performance of FAME. Throughout the piece, the dancers played with iconic images (a cowboy hat, a gun, a creepy golden cat head worn by a dancer while swinging her “paws” as if fist pumping at the Jersey Shore). Iconic situations were also performed, such as sleeping with a director to get a movie role. It was easy to see how the techniques we discussed in the workshop were utilized in creating the movement on stage. The sensation of the sensual was present yet infused with an authentic silliness. The combination of sexual and silly was gripping to experience, with the performers twisting their bodies throughout the space, including on the floor. At one point, two of the performers sat with their legs spread in what I thought was about to be a moment about birth, but it transformed into a scene about sex—a fitting transition. Their movement was an amalgam of sensual, outrageous, and physically daring, fusing together into a beautifully cohesive whole. The Gaga technique is clearly working, as this company produced interesting and novel movement while remaining completely authentic in their performance. 

Brandon Monokian works professionally as an actor, director, and writer. For more, follow him on Twitter: @brandonmonokian.

Frank Van Laecke and Alain Platel. (Photo by Luk Monsaert.)

A cat has nine lives. 

They have more. 

And during their final life, they found each other in a safe ghetto. 

If you sneak your way in, you can see them clawing, growling, and hissing. 

And when the ghetto is demolished, all lives seem to have been used up. 

The trip to nothingness is crushing. 

Because even skin has a memory. 

Inspired by the penetrating film Yo Soy Así (by Sonia Herman Dolz), in which the closing of a transvestite cabaret in Barcelona affords us a glimpse into the private lives of a memorable group of older artists, actress Vanessa Van Durme collected a number of transsexual and transvestite friends for a project that can be called unique in every respect. Gardenia is not a work of fiction. Gardenia is a singular account, the most intimate of tales. 

Gardenia goes deep into the turbulent lives of nine striking people—seven older individuals, who seem to effortlessly navigate the twilight zone between being male and being female, in contrast to and in harmony with a “young guy” and a “real woman.” Each on a quest, each with their own intriguing story. Sometimes funny, sometimes overwhelming.  Sometimes poignant, sometimes hilarious. Each with a trunk full of longing. Often lost or out of reach. Sometimes endearing. Mostly unusual. In their minds, the sounds of the past. In their eyes, doubts about tomorrow but also a healthy dose of hope. 

Nine individuals so special you will want to get to know them. Want to embrace them. 

What binds them are the marks scored deep on their souls. 

What drives them is the unimaginable will to survive. 

In the hope they will succeed. 

Through transformation. Or not. 

In the knowledge that the price is incredibly high. 

A cat has nine lives. 

They have more. 

But the question is whether 

this makes them enviable… 

Each one is searching. 

Each lives in a world that is sometimes strange, sometimes not, sometimes overwhelming, 

sometimes not. 

Everything is still open. 

The path can lead us everywhere. 

Also to things we wish to avoid. 

And above all to things that mustn’t be denied. 

This choreography of genders. 

This journey or this struggle towards an identity. 

This bizarre world, sometimes dark and at the same time so luminous. 

This story will certainly be an authentic and honest testimony, nourished by what the cast gives us every day. These generous people so full of scars—scars on their skin and scars that we don’t perceive at first sight—but with a will to survive the prejudices of which they were or still are the victims. 

These are slices of life, put into a visual show where dance harmonizes with song, with words and phrases, but perhaps above all with special and vulnerable souls you’ll want to embrace. The journey is so dear to us. We advance without hurrying, and every second is a magical discovery, an immense treasury of information—an unforgettable encounter that is certain to change our lives. 

Alain Platel founded les ballets C de la B in 1984; under his direction, the company has achieved international acclaim, adopting the motto ” this dance is for the world and the world is for everyone.” Frank Van Laecke has directed numerous plays, operas, and musicals internationally, as well as served as the artistic and actors’ director of a popular youth series for Belgian television. Gardenia marks their first collaboration. 

May 2010; reproduced by permission of les ballets C de la B.

Gardenia. (Photo by Luk Monsaert.)

When I attended a performance of Gardenia in Montreal during the groundbreaking Festival TransAmériques, I was humbled by the gripping authenticity of the show’s performers and the intimately personal quality of their performances. Much of theater is predicated on fooling an audience into believing a staged reality. But what happens when the performers live a life of pretend in order to be accepted socially? 

In shows like La Cage aux Folles, men play women for effect, for entertainment, and only passing reference is made to the dilemmas of cross-dressing. Movies also have won large audiences when leading men have found it expedient to play women (think Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie and Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire). But what happens when a man chooses to be a woman in order to survive, to be real, and being entertaining is what is demanded of them by those who are watching—that is, by us? 

At the center of Gardenia is an elaborate runway showcase set to Ravel’s Bolero. Each performer takes to the red carpet dressed in male clothing and finishes dressed as a female fantasy figure (imagine Judy Garland or Mae West). By the end of this musical transformation, the bravura dress-up was not the put-on: those male suits seemed shamelessly fake. In Gardenia, we see performers who discovered, in their real lives, that being male was something other than themselves. To be themselves, they needed to be female, but they also “played” female to outrageous effect in the world of drag cabarets. I asked myself, which is the pretend persona? Being a man or being a woman? Or, maybe, is it both? 

While watching Gardenia, I laughed and cried and only later questioned whether my projection of acceptable behavior had kept these performances safely in check within acceptable stereotypes. Do I consider a man in drag to be a real man? Or was this a case of a man using drag to find herself? Were my expectations as an audience member complicit in a performer’s choice to take on a persona like Garland or West? Is this show for a leering audience or for an inner circle of the like minded, protecting themselves from predators? 

In the end, the performers were neither Garland nor West but just themselves: people I wanted to know for real. 

Jedediah Wheeler is Executive Director of Arts & Cultural Programming at Montclair State University.

Akram Khan, Leicester, 2010. (Photo by Laurent Ziegler.)

A Bangladeshi choreographer, a British urban planner, and a 13th century Sufi poet walk into a bar…the result is less punchline, more visual punch. The program notes for Akram Khan Company’s Vertical Road begin with a poem by Rumi; to ruminate (pun intended) on his ideas is a fitting beginning to this evening of dance and movement narrative. His words paint a picture of life—all life, not just humanity—as part of a vertical passageway: from one existence you expire and go a level up. “Then why fear disappearance through death,” Rumi rightfully questions, when beyond this life additional levels can be found that transcend imagination? 

Khan discusses his own creativity-based journey in a recent interview with the New York Times and says, “I’m not interested in showing reality onstage….”  In Vertical Road, then, Khan uses his magnificent dancers to dare to imagine what those levels beyond reality might be—or at least to explore the journey upward from levels known to levels unknown. 

The journey on Akram Khan’s Vertical Road begins with a single being. We know not whether this being, obscured behind an opaque scrim, is male, female, or even human. The being strikes the scrim in front of him/her, sending ripples upward to the proscenium. In my recollection, I’ve never seen an element of scenic drapery inhabit as much character as this scrim, at once suggesting a vertical ocean and, in moments, the aurora borealis. 

From here, images of upward mobility abound: bodies are lifted and set into new places; arms stretch heavenward for most of the first episode, sometimes longingly, sometimes aggressively. Most strikingly, the dancers’ tunics are saturated with a white powder, such that any punctuated movement releases billows of particles from their bodies to the rafters. Five minutes in, I was fixated on the cloud that had formed above their heads, sharply illuminated by the stage lights it was about to engulf. It was as original a way as I have seen to physically create a heaven—the next level, present and imaginable, until it slowly dissipates, leaving only a trace of what is to come. 

In the present, then, what remains are moments and vignettes that demonstrate what we must learn and overcome in this existence to proceed to the next. Not so much reality as visual metaphor, Vertical Road is not simply a work of dance—it is also a work of theater, with movement scenes that describe how we work as a tribe and also as adversaries to the greater good, how we comfort each other and how we manipulate each other, how we use ceremony to lend import to moments of celebration and growth. Nitin Sawhney’s composition underscores this all perfectly, providing throbbing heartbeats as well as controlled exhalations for the struggles of the beings on stage. 

The inclusion of Colas, the “urban planner” in the trio mentioned above, is an interesting one: that a company that literally develops roads (presumably the horizontal kind) would be interested in supporting a work of dance in a metaphorical journey upward speaks to the importance Akram Khan has in England, his home country (he is Bangladeshi by ethnicity but not by citizenship). That a business, albeit one concerned with roads and sustainability, would involve itself in a creative work of this nature indicates to me that perhaps we are all up a level higher than initially thought. 

Pamela Vachon has worked for Lincoln Center Festival and Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet; she is a food blog author and occasional dance critic.

Story/Time. (Photo by Paul B. Goode.)

As the neon green strobe lights dotted the smoky dance floor, I stepped away for a moment and took a sip of water. On the opposite side of the dance floor, the DJ leered from beneath the brim of his baseball cap and monitored the perimeter of the room from behind his turntable, nodding to the beats of the music approvingly while facing the crowd of dancers. I was just busting a move at a warehouse party in Baltimore when—strangely—I was reminded of John Cage. 

Although Cage’s music doesn’t sound like Aphex Twin, John Cage and his compositions have influenced the course of electronic music, dance music, classical music—pretty much every kind of music—for the past 50 years. Not only have his ideas made a lasting impact on music from the mid-20th century onward, but his theories on art and art making have extended to writers, visual artists, and choreographers, like Bill T. Jones. (More on Bill T. later.) 

First things first: who is John Cage? John Cage (born 1912, died 1992) was an experimental composer whose work questioned the boundaries of music. In one of his most well-known and most controversial compositions, 4’33” (composed in 1952), Cage walks on stage, sits at the piano as though he is about to play, and instead leads the audience into silence. Wrappers are crinkled, people in the audience cough, a door opens or closes, a car honks its horn outside. All this noise happens by chance. The only part of 4’33” that’s pre-planned is the amount of time that audience and performer sit silently listening to the “music” around them. 4’33” encourages all of us to embrace the sounds of the environment as music. 

Cage’s acceptance of everyday noise as a potential ingredient in a work of art has had a huge impact on the kinds of music that you, me, and my friends in Baltimore enjoy. 

For example: sampling! 

The idea of recording an electronic or organic noise and then adding it to a composition in a percussive or melodic way is one result of Cage’s artistic philosophies. In fact, a number of the choices he made as an artist were results of his studies in Zen Buddhism and Indian philosophy. For many of his compositions, Cage relied on the I Ching, an ancient Chinese text written about changes and events in the world. 

Cage’s composition Indeterminacy is similar to 4’33″.  Indeterminacy is a collection of 90 one-minute stories. David Tudor, an instrumentalist who performed many of Cage’s compositions, improvised alongside Cage’s reading. Many of the stories are memories from Cage’s life. (An awesome web site, courtesy of computer scientist Eddie Kohler, is filled with Cage’s stories from Indeterminacy, as they appear on the page, along with information about John Cage and his compositions.) 

The idea that writing and verbally expressed memories could be music—the very same thing as, say, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony—was and still is very new. Cage’s ability to mix media like visual art, music, and writing into new forms and genres has created an even broader range of possibilities for artists today. Here is a great clip of Cage himself reading from Indeterminacy: 

When Bill T. Jones (born 1952) was thinking about creating a dance theater piece that involved storytelling, Cage and Indeterminacy became an inspiration. As in most of Jones’s work, his creative process for Story/Time, which debuts at Peak Performances this weekend and was co-commissioned by Peak Performances and the Walker Art Center, started with a question. In this case, the question was, “What about me?” 

Jones had retired from performing with his dance company, but, after five years, he was eager to get back on stage and do something.  Storytelling piqued his interest. In a recent interview with the Walker Art Center’s Phillip Bither, Jones comments, “If you’re going to do something that is spontaneous and tell stories, then maybe what you need is form. And then I thought, ‘Whose form?’” That’s where John Cage came in. Cage experimented with new forms of channeling artistic expression. Jones was ready to create choreography in a way that was new to him. 

In Indeterminacy, Cage’s one-minute stories are strung together within a non-narrative structure. In Story/Time, Jones chose to do the same with the addition of the dancers of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company on stage beside him. The dances that result are sequences of brief and varied moments that accompany and provide a counterpoint to Jones’s personal stories. In another nod to Cageian experimentation, the sequencing of the stories and movement is subject to random variation. 

While taking chances in a new phase of his life, Jones looked to Cage for confidence. By the time Jones completed Story/Time, he regarded Cage as an “unofficial mentor.”  Thinking about Cage and his long-time partner, the equally innovative choreographer Merce Cunningham, Jones reflected, “I love them both for what they represent….They are ideas, and ideas that I cherish. They are badass artist types who really were able to do something that maybe I’m not able to do. They could thumb their nose at the world and expectations of the world, at least at a certain point, and they did something that was strong.” 

Check out the full conversation between Bill T. Jones and Phillip Bither, including more on Cage, randomness, and chance operations, on the Walker Art Center web site. 

And then don’t miss Story/Time, appearing at the Alexander Kasser Theater through January 29. 

Sara Wintz’s writing has appeared in The Poetry Project Newsletter, Jacket, HTMLGIANT, 6×6 and HARRIET: The Poetry Foundation Blog. She was communications assistant at Peak Performances from 2009 to 2010 and is a 2010 graduate of the MFA program in writing at Bard College. 

Tweet YOUR story: Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Co.’s Story/Time brings together 70 one-minute stories from Bill’s life—moments that moved him, people who inspired him, places and journeys that were important to him. Help us tell YOUR stories: share your memories on Twitter using the tag #storytimeMSU to tell a 140-character story of your own. Our audience’s own version of Story/Time will scroll continuously in our lobby during the run of the show!

(Photo by Ravi Deepres.)

As part of Montclair State’s Creative Campus project, members of the UK-based dance company Wayne McGregor | Random Dance visited Montclair State for a series of discussions and workshops centering around the company’s “choreographic thinking tools,” culminating in last spring’s Brainstorm symposium on creative thinking.  In October, Wayne McGregor continued the conversation with the campus community, in conjunction with the company’s performances of FAR. Below, Brandon Monokian shares reflections inspired by this informal Q&A session; for more, read reports on the initial workshops, by Brandon and Sara Wintz. 

“Be wrong, be strong” is a philosophy I adopted about two and a half years ago. I was about to enter the professional world of the arts with four and a half years of theater school behind me and a degree about to be placed in my hand, and my confidence in my work was at an all-time low. Throughout my years studying in school, I had unwittingly become so obsessed with a perfect final product that I had forgotten the importance of the process, and the result was a series of safe and lackluster theatrical endeavors I’d rather forget. So I started being wrong and being strong and, in turn, learning from my mistakes. 

I took this attitude with me into a workshop with two members of choreographer Wayne McGregor’s company, Random Dance. With a virtually nonexistent dance background, I was skeptical of what I would be able to achieve in the course of a two-day workshop, but I threw myself into the experience. The workshop was life changing, and, as a result of what I learned, I gained a plethora of new techniques and tools I could use to generate ideas, communicate with others, and understand my own sense of self as a theater director and actor. Months later, I was ecstatic to learn that not only would Peak Performances host the American premier of Wayne McGregor | Random Dance’s FAR, but they had arranged a discussion with McGregor himself. 

Over the course of an hour, McGregor solidified what I had learned in the workshops and left those present with new ideas and insights that could be used in theater, dance, and education, as well as skills useful in navigating this strange and complicated world we live in. “You need to make a decision to move on, even if the decision doesn’t end up taking you where you want to go. If you never make a decision, you will never go anywhere.” His words seemed a much more eloquent and refined version of my philosophy. If we could live by that simple idea, we would be able to accomplish much more, not only creatively but in daily life, right? Still the question remained: Why is it so hard to make decisions? Why are we so afraid of being wrong? 

McGregor repeatedly made reference to the British school system “teaching the creativity out of you.” He recounted a personal experience from his younger school days, when he was asked to draw a farm; upon completion of the work, his teacher held up his drawing in disgust and told him just how poor his artistic skills were. 

From my own personal experience, I know that the American school system can be equally effective at undermining creativity. McGregor was quick to point out that a large part of the reason for this is that there has come to be an almost defined categorization of what makes art “good.” We as a society have somehow managed to nail down a rating system for something that in reality is completely subjective, whether it be dance, theater, or visual arts. We can so easily forget that taste in the arts is as varied as tastes in food—while some people like roasted duck, others prefer ballet. 

Perhaps we feel the need to rate things when we are being judged and graded at school and then turn on the television to find every network has a “reality” competition, like X Factor, with a set of “brutally honest” judges searching for “that extra something.” Even the search for the “X factor” now fits ever so neatly into a safe, definably good box. We’ve become so obsessed with “artistic perfection” and “artistic product” that not only are we staring at airbrushed magazines, but we are listening to airbrushed voices on the radio, auto-tuned beyond recognition. 

McGregor has noticed that, because of this obsession with being “good,” artists will begin editing out their work before they even know if what they desire to do has value. To combat this unnecessary self-editing, he creates a safe place where people can be free to experiment; in doing so, their creativity thrives. In his safe space, he gives his dancers “tasks” they are to complete. It is in figuring out how to accomplish these tasks that dancers engage in decision making that leads them to discover novel movement they did not previously have in their physical vocabulary. These tasks and ideas are the same that I experienced a few months earlier when taking Random Dance’s workshop. This journey to discovery often leads to valuable work that doesn’t always make the final performance. “I don’t feel I have anything to keep unless I have something to throw away,” McGregor says. Once he has an ample amount of work, he can then begin an editing process that leads him to his final product. Learning of his techniques and his need to “throw away,” I was eager to see what he had kept in his production of FAR. 

FAR is a visceral dance piece in which performers’ bodies transform from sweet and loving to violent and harsh in a matter of moments. Throughout the piece, we see how “far” love and violence are from each other (most times, not so far at all). The piece begins with the natural light of torches, showing life, with an ending of a dancer seemingly dying indicating that even the space between life and death is incredibly minute. FAR is a moving experience that is simultaneously visually and emotionally stimulating, as a result of the physical awareness the performers have of their relationships to each other, as well as the simple set and glorious lighting design. When one dancer creates a movement or a light changes, a physical response is seen from another dancer; even if small, it creates a connectedness not often seen in an ensemble of performers. This connectedness leads to the creation of an engaging dance work that will not soon be forgotten. 

With the work that appeared on stage so captivating, one wonders what wonderful work McGregor edited out. After experiencing the workshop, listening to him speak, and seeing his work staged, I must say that if he is practicing what he is preaching, it is truly paying off. 

Random Dance’s residency at Montclair State was made possible in part by a grant from the Association of Performing Arts Presenters Creative Campus Innovations Grant Program, funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. 

Brandon Monokian received a B.A. in Theatre Studies at Montclair State.  He works as an actor, director, and writer.

Wayne McGregor. (Photo by Nick Mead.)

“In flesh and blood lay the self and its articulations. With its own elaborate sign language of gesture and feeling, the body was the inseparable dancing partner of the mind or soul; now in step, now a tangle of limbs and intentions, mixed emotions. Organism and consciousness, soma and psyche, heart and head, the outer and inner—all merged, and all needed to be minutely observed if the human enigma were ever to be appreciated.” 

—Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason 

In rehearsal for Wayne McGregor’s latest work, dancers from his company perform extraordinary motions. They throw themselves into whiplash spins, let waves ebb through their necks, build counterintuitive curves and angles into limb and spine. No other contemporary choreographer has developed such an instantly recognizable range of movement—familiar yet dazzlingly novel, giving bodies new things to do while speculating about the minds that inspire them. 

Inspiration for the new work came from Flesh and the Age of Reason (hence the abbreviated title FAR), Roy Porter’s prodigious history of 18th-century explorations into body and soul. An age of medical advance and anatomical rigor brought with it radical philosophical inquiries into the mechanisms of thought and emotion. This intellectual ferment connected with McGregor’s own work, especially his collaborations with cognitive scientists. “What we’ve been doing is unpeeling the layers of the creative process: how do we understand better what happens in the creative process, and how do we arm dancers to build better imaginations? And I thought that stripping away of layers was analogous to the very beginning of the Enlightenment.” It was an era in which autopsies revealed the body’s workings and allowed intricate anatomical drawings. Microscopes revealed minutiae, while telescopes opened the skies to scrutiny, unseating the earth as focus of the universe. Where was the soul in all this? Where was God? If the human body is an intricate mechanism, is there a ghost in the machine? 

“We’ve still not solved that conundrum,” McGregor admits. “There’s still a lot that we don’t know about the brain and its relationship to the body—it’s unexplainable, so far. I thought this was a fascinating beginning to explore physically. It’s helpful in exploring things that I am interested in anyway, in terms of what inspires us to do the things that we do.” 

Porter’s book pursues the mystery of a self embodied in flesh and blood. In an apt phrase, he wrote that “the body was the inseparable dancing-partner of the mind or soul—now in step, now a tangle of limbs and intentions, mixed emotions.” This is very much Wayne McGregor | Random Dance territory—the mind can’t exist without the body, while flesh is animated by thought and feeling. Porter quotes the narrator of Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, who opines that soul and body are “joint-sharers in everything… A man cannot dress but his ideas get cloathed at the same time.” 

McGregor has been helping ideas into their clothes for almost two decades now. For him, the Enlightenment represents an age of enquiry. Porter describes physical phenomena becoming subject to observation and experiment, rather than custom and conjecture. Everything was up for grabs, and that’s very much McGregor’s own inquisitive approach to the world, wide-eyed and curious. 

The approach has also attracted leading ballet companies, who now clamor for McGregor’s attention. He is Resident Choreographer at The Royal Ballet, and ever since Chroma exploded onto the stage at Covent Garden with its whomping orchestrations of the White Stripes, prestigious international companies have been slavering for a piece of him. He is currently making new work for the Paris Opera Ballet and for the Bolshoi (which will feature the company’s diamond youngsters, Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev). McGregor’s recent pieces—especially ENTITY for Random and a thrilling trio of works for The Royal Ballet (Chroma, Infra, Limen)—have pushed his trademark movement into something beyond the cerebral: aching, horny, alive to questing minds trapped inside the body. It isn’t only illustrious ballerinas who will have a chance to do a McGregor: he’s also creating huge public dance work for the 2012 Olympics. 

If everything can be questioned, possibilities unfold in every direction. How do bodies express or contradict intention? What animates them to perform in certain ways? Some spectators think McGregor pressures bodies to perform “unnaturally.” It’s true that, in the rehearsal studio, dancers perform extraordinary, rapid transitions: butts jut outward while knees swivel inward; a pulse skedaddles down a limb yet changes direction at the joint. 

However uncanny, this is no more weird than the decorous deformation of classical ballet. We’re not built to wrench our hips sideways in turnout, to load all our weight on the folded knuckles of a single foot. It’s wrong, but dazzled by a ballerina’s artistry we stop noticing. McGregor notices, and compels attention through his own sleek distortions. “I like bodies misbehaving, because I think it engages your eye in a way that clarity of line doesn’t.” 

“Some people object, actually object to a distorted body,” he marvels. “There’s a sense that if the body looks like it’s in some kind of physical trauma that it relates to some kind of emotional trauma.” McGregor has used illustrations from Diderot’s pioneering 18th-century Encyclopaedia while creating FAR, which reveal the “levers and pulleys” of human action. “You see how it works. At the end of the day, these aren’t robots—it’s always a human being doing it. We have such a normalizing, limited view of what the potential of the body is. I really respect and like the aesthetic of ballet, but it’s only one part of the continuum of possibility.” 

Performing with Wayne McGregor | Random Dance is much more than simply doing the steps. Dancers must also be eager to delve into problems of language, sound, kinaesthetics. “It’s not just about physical propensity,” says McGregor, “but about how you get people to think from a cognitive point of view in relation to choreography. If you’ve got those skills at your fingertips, it extends the palette. What I need is an open person. If they’re plugged into the world and have a wider view, not a mono-track view, they can come with you on that journey. That’s the kind of dancer I like.” 

This investigative mentality suffuses the rehearsal studio: it feels like a lab. While McGregor works with pairs of dancers, everyone else beavers away on their own knotty dilemma. It’s concentrated, but not solemn, especially as McGregor doesn’t so much explain movement as give it a soundtrack. His vivid vocalizations could come from a Marvel comic: “Waah-oo!”; “Ba-bay-boom-yay!” 

Just as Enlightenment scientists developed instruments to pursue their interests, so McGregor has helped develop a pioneering piece of software—the Choreographic Language Agent. It doesn’t choreograph, but by holding detailed information will allow artists to explore movement and solve problems. “It’s very beautiful,” he enthuses. The program will be able to think for itself and offer movement options consistent with previously choices, or perhaps intriguingly different. “It’s an interesting way of dialoguing with the technology to be able to expose some of your habits and either use them or break them.” 

McGregor is always keen to break his set habits, but he wants us to meet the same challenge. “In the same way that we’re trying to understand our habits of making, people also watch with a rigid mental schema. They don’t often think, ‘How else can I watch?’ I’m hoping over time that people can challenge themselves and have a richer experience of watching.” 

A version of this article was previously published in the Sunday Times. Reproduced by permission of Wayne McGregor|Random Dance. 

David Jays writes regularly for the Sunday Times and a variety of other publications on theater and dance. He is the author of Dance Gazette.