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Well I couldn’t either—after seeing his choreography for ENTITY here at the Alexander Kasser Theater last month! 

 

If you’re begging for more samples of Wayne McGregor’s choreography like I sure am, take a look at the following clips that I’ve compiled from the YouTube archives.

In this next video, Wayne speaks about the meaning of the word “chroma,” which he defines as intensity of color, or, freedom from white—leading into an explanation of the choreography for Chroma. (His choreography focuses on that latter definition, “freedom from white.”)

On Chroma, which premiered at the Royal Opera House in London in 2006, he explains, “What we’ve tried to do in the piece is create a volume of space, with the architect John Pawson, in which the dancers provide a graphic sketch, a relief, from this sense of white.” (Later in the video, you’ll notice that there’s a captivating photograph from Chroma, of two dancers costumed in white, in front of a bright, white set.)

This video also spends a lot of time with Wayne’s frequent collaborator, Joby Talbot, who discusses the way that the music for Chroma came together; later, Wayne notes how it contrasted with Pawson’s “zen-like” set.

Wayne choreographed Dyad 1929, for The Australian Ballet last year. He begins by explaining: “When we talk about dance, so often we just say it’s instinctive, it’s the body just doing something, as if the mind doesn’t bear any relationship to it… and of course this is very clearly false.”

This stylish video documents the making of Dyad 1929 and includes dancers from The Australian Ballet and their perspective on his work, like this one from Dana Stephensen: “Wayne has a very unique style that is so much in his physicality himself; visually seeing that on someone and then transposing that onto your own body requires a lot of actual thought.”

Ballet is always interdisciplinary: a collaboration between sound, movement and visual art. But Wayne’s take on ballet is interdisciplinary in an altogether different and unusual way. Collaboration between sound, movement, and visual art become joined at the hip with science, technology, and history. Wayne McGregor certainly isn’t the only choreographer expanding ballet’s interdisciplinary framework, but his take on it may be one of the more captivating.

Sara Wintz is Communications Assistant in the Office of Arts & Cultural Programming at Montclair State University. Her writing has appeared on Ceptuetics and in The Poetry Project Newsletter. She recently reviewed Liz Waldner’s performance text, Play for HTML Giant.