La Biennale di Venezia reappoints Wayne McGregor as Artistic Director of Dance and Willem Dafoe as AD of Theatre
Sir Wayne McGregor has been reappointed as the Artistic Director of the Dance Department of La Biennale di Venezia for the two-year term 2025/2026.
The decision was made by the Board of Directors, chaired by Pietrangelo Buttafuoco. Wayne McGregor was appointed Director of the Dance Department by the preceding Board of Directors in 2020, an appointment that was to expire after the 18th International Festival of Contemporary Dance, We Humans, to be held in Venice from 18th July to 3rd August 2024.
Wayne McGregor was successful in building a far-reaching project for Biennale Danza, wielding a remarkable sensibility that looks with attention to the younger generations on the world stage – said Buttafuoco – Seeing him at work in the past weeks, studying his prodigious imagination and his efforts as a Maestro in the exclusive school that is the Biennale Danza College, allowed me to understand that his work deserves more time to consolidate practices and visions that are important to our institution. Wayne McGregor and I, in the name of a new fact of art, have agreed to meet in Venice once again, and so I am pleased to announce that he has been reconfirmed for the two-year term 2025-2026.
This fourth year as Director of Dance in Venice for McGregor culminates in an epic festival exploring the nature of what it is to be human. For thousands of years, bodies moving rhythmically has been the main form of communication and, according to McGregor, our desires have been expressed through our bodies historically. Furthermore, he believes that dance is within us and cannot be replaced by words alone. The 2024 artistic programme celebrates the body’s ability to communicate when our feelings are too strong, too complicated or too much to bear. In those moments, it is the body that provides relief and solace.
The 18th International Festival of Contemporary Dance, titled We Humans will include 7 world premieres, 2 European premieres and 11 Italian premieres from iconic dance world leaders to emerging, innovative new voices. Over 160 artists will perform in Venice with more than 80 events across 17 days.
McGregor said:
It has been a great honour and creative pleasure curating the last four years of Biennale Danza. During this time, we have been able to grow the dance festival into a three-week international event inviting and commissioning extraordinary artists and companies from six continents who have thrilled and inspired our broadening audiences. Continuing our mission over the next two years to invest in new contemporary dance talents, platforming their voices through Biennale College and our bespoke developmental programmes. I look forward to working with the brilliant Biennale team to drive forward an evolving and powerful vision for dance today.
American actor Willem Dafoe has been named Artistic Director of the Theatre Department for 2025 and 2026.
It is an honour to announce the appointment of Willem Dafoe as the Director of Biennale Teatro – stated Pietrangelo Buttafuoco. Theatre is in fact the original home of his lustrous career. One of the founders of the legendary Wooster Group in 1977, the perfect control of his body on stage has always stemmed from discipline, knowledge, passion and a profound awareness of theatre.
Dafoe said:
I was first surprised then happy to receive Pietrangelo Buttafuoco’s invitation to be the Director of the International Theatre Festival of La Biennale di Venezia. I realise that I am known as a film actor, but I was born in the theatre, the theatre trained me and galvanised me. I am a stage animal. I am an actor. Theatre taught me about art and life. I worked with the Wooster Group for 27 years, I have collaborated with great directors from Richard Foreman to Bob Wilson. The direction of my Theatre program will be charted by my personal development. A sort of exploration of the essence of the body.
More on Willem Dafoe
Dafoe began his artistic career as a university student in Milwaukee where at 19 he joined Theatre X (1975-1977), one of the first experimental theatre groups in the US, influenced by Living and by Grotowski, with which he performed in Offending the Audience by Peter Handke and in many of the plays by the director and artistic director John Schneider. In Europe, where he lived in 1976, he was at the legendary Mickery Theatre in Amsterdam.
His most important theatre training was in New York where, together with director Elizabeth LeCompte and actors Ron Vawter, Kate Valk, Jim Clayburgh and Peyton Smith, he co-founded The Wooster Group, with which he would perform on stage for over twenty years (1977-2003), participating in many of the productions, which featured a singular blend of languages and texts – from the classics to American counterculture, from Flaubert to Lenny Bruce – that made it the fulcrum of the underground scene in 1980s New York.
Dafoe also worked with directors who have left their mark in international theatre with their imagery. Richard Foreman, playwright, director and experimental theoretician, equally renowned on European stages and founder of “ontological-hysteric” theatre, would call him for Miss Universal Happiness (1985) and The Idiot Savant (2009). Robert Wilson chose him for The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic (2011), and alongside Mikhail Baryshnikov, for The Old Woman, based on the short stories by Russian poet Daniil Kharms (2013). Finally, for Romeo Castellucci, Willem Dafoe would star in Il velo nero del pastore, based on the short story by Hawthorne (2016). In 2016 he participated in Biennale Teatro in the masterclass section, teaching a workshop dedicated to acting.
More on Wayne McGregor
Born in Stockport (Great Britain) in 1970, Sir Wayne McGregor CBE is a British choreographer and director. He is Artistic Director of Studio Wayne McGregor, a creative network that expands the frontiers of the intelligence of the body through dance, design and technology.
Since 2006, Wayne McGregor has been Resident Choreographer at the Royal Ballet, the first choreographer from a contemporary dance background to be invited into the role.
McGregor is regularly commissioned by, and has works in the repertories of, the most important dance companies in the world, including Paris Opera Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, La Scala Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, and Australian Ballet.
McGregor is in demand as a choreographer for the theatre (Old Vic, National Theatre, Royal Court, Donmar), opera (La Scala, The Royal Opera, English National Opera, Scottish Opera), film (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Legend of Tarzan, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Sing, Mary Queen of Scots, The Outrun), and music videos (Radiohead, The Chemical Brothers). ABBA Voyage, the revolutionary concert that launched the Swedish pop sensations back onstage in an outstanding avatar performance in 2022, choreographed by McGregor, will continue through 2025.
McGregor’s work has earned him a multitude of awards including four Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards, two Time Out Awards, three South Bank Show Awards, two Olivier Awards, a Prix Benois de la Danse and two Golden Mask Awards. In 2011 McGregor was awarded a CBE for Services to Dance, and in 2021 he was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Prix de Lausanne.
Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Italian ballerina Carla Fracci.
Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.
He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.
