Company Wayne McGregor with Autobiography and UniVerse: A Dark Crystal Odyssey in London
Company Wayne McGregor returns to Sadler’s Wells Theatre in March with two works from Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist, the choreographer Wayne McGregor.
Throughout his career, Wayne McGregor has made choreography that interrogates life through the experience of the body in its multifaceted relationship with technology.
In 2017, McGregor turned his attention to the ‘body as archive’ with Autobiography (1.0), the first in a developing series of unique dance portraits inspired and determined by the sequencing of his own genetic code. Layering choreographic imprints over personal memoir and in dialogue with a specially created algorithm that hijacks McGregor’s DNA data, Autobiography upends the traditional nature of dance-making as artificial intelligence and instinct converge in creative authorship.
In the most recent iteration of Wayne McGregor’s Autobiography (v95 and v96), genetic code, AI and choreography merge in a work that re-imagines and remakes itself anew for every performance. AISOMA – a new AI tool developed with Google Arts and Culture utilising machine-learning trained on 100s of hours of McGregor’s choreographic archive – overwrites the configurations of its initial state to present fresh movement options to the performers. It has original music by Jlin, set design and projection by Ben Cullen Williams, lighting design by Lucy Carter, costume design by Aitor Throup, dramaturgy by Uzma Hameed and algorithm design by Nick Rothwell.
Wayne McGregor’s UniVerse: A Dark Crystal Odyssey, reimagines Jim Henson’s cult 1982 film The Dark Crystal – a dark epic with mythological underpinnings and ecological overtones – as a potent tale for today in its depiction of “an earth in peril, torn apart by extremes and in desperate need of healing”.
McGregor leads a team including composer Joel Cadbury, film designer Ravi Deepres, lighting designer Lucy Carter, dramaturg Uzma Hameed, costume designer Philip Delamore, face-and body-artist Alex Box and spoken word artist Isaiah Hull. This collaboration explores themes of nature, exploitation, courage and rescue in an adventure through an unsettling world, in the context of our own ailing planet.
While fans of the film may recognise the shadow of characters and situations, they are glimpsed through the maelstrom of our contemporary world with its magical characters and environments, and its depiction of the darknesses that lurk within the human psyche. UniVerse: A Dark Crystal Odyssey, taps into an innate, deep-held knowledge of good and evil, as well as an umbilical connection to the natural world. A modern myth of ecological urgency.
Autobiography (v95 and v96)
Performances: Tuesday 12 & Wednesday 13 March 2024
UniVerse: A Dark Crystal Odyssey
Performances: Friday 15 & Saturday 16 March 2024
Tickets from £15
Ticket Office: 020 7863 8000 or www.sadlerswells.com
