Wayne McGregor
Wayne McGregor, CBE (born 12 March 1970) is a multi award-winning British c*ographer and director. He is the Artistic Director of Studio Wayne McGregor and Resident C*ographer of The Royal Ballet. McGregor was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) 2011 for Services to Dance.
Contents
- 1 Biography
- 2 Career
- 3 Credits
- 3.1 Dance
- 3.2 Film/TV
- 3.3 Theatre
- 3.4 Opera
- 3.5 Fashion
- 3.6 Art/Architecture
- 4 Awards
- 5 Personal
- 6 References
- 7 External links
Biography
McGregor was born in Stockport, England, in 1970. He studied dance at Bretton Hall College of the University of Leeds and at the José Limon School in New York. In 1992 he was appointed C*ographer-in-Residence at The Place, London, and in the same year he founded his own company, Random Dance (now Company Wayne McGregor). Company Wayne McGregor was invited to be the first Resident Company at the new Sadler's Wells in 2002. Appointed in 2006, McGregor is the first Resident C*ographer of The Royal Ballet from a contemporary dance background. In 2021, McGregor was announced as the Director of Dance for the Venice Biennale until 2024. McGregor is Professor of C*ography at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and holds an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from Plymouth University as well as an Honorary Doctor of Letters from University of Leeds and University of Chester. McGregor also holds an Honorary Doctor from University of the Arts London. He is part of the Circle of Cultural Fellows at King's College London. In 2017 he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the British Science *ociation. McGregor topped the list for dance in The Progress 1000 celebration of London's most influential people in 2018. In 2021 McGregor was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Prix de Lausanne.
Career
Founded in 1993 (formerly known as Random Dance Company and Wayne McGregor | Random Dance), Studio Wayne McGregor encomp*es McGregor's touring company of dancers, Company Wayne McGregor, which is also Resident Company at Sadler's Wells in London, and all of McGregor's creative work in dance, film, theatre, opera, fashion, technology, and TV. Studio Wayne McGregor also leads extensive learning and engagement projects nationally and internationally, artist development initiatives, and research and development work with science and technology partners. Significant large-scale engagement projects include 'Big Dance' in Trafalgar Square as part of the 2012 London Olympics, and 'LightLens' for Aarhus European City of Culture in 2017. Studio Wayne McGregor's building opened at Here East on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in March 2017.
McGregor has made over 30 works for Company Wayne McGregor (celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2023), and over 20 works for The Royal Ballet. He also regularly creates new work for international companies including La Scala Theatre Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, NDT1, Bayerisches Staatsballett Munich, American Ballet Theatre, San Francisco Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, New York City Ballet, The Australian Ballet and the English National Ballet. McGregor also has works in the repertories of companies including Paris Opera Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, Mariinsky Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Royal Danish Ballet.
Notable works include Living Archive: An AI Performance Experiment, Autobiography, Tree of Codes, Atomos, FAR, UNDANCE, En*y (Company Wayne McGregor); The Dante Project, Yugen, Multiverse, Obsidian Tear, Woolf Works, Raven Girl, Carbon Life, Tetractys: The Art of Fugue, Infra, Limen, Chroma, Qualia (The Royal Ballet); +/- Human (Company Wayne McGregor, The Royal Ballet, Random International); AfteRite (American Ballet Theatre); Sunyata (Bayerisches Staatsballett Munich); Alea Sands, Genus (Paris Opera Ballet); Kairos (Ballett Zurich); Borderlands (San Francisco Ballet); Outlier (New York City Ballet); Skindex, Renature (NDT1), EDEN | EDEN (Stuttgart Ballet), and PreSentient (Rambert).
He has worked on numerous feature films and music videos including Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Movement Director), The Legend of Tarzan (Movement Director), Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movement Coach), Sing (C*ographer), Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (C*ographer), Mary Queen of Scots (C*ographer and Movement Coach), Audrey (C*ographer), Radiohead's "Lotus Flower", Atoms for Peace "Ingenue" and The Chemical Brothers featuring Beck "Wide Open" (C*ographer). McGregor has also worked on numerous fashion and TV works and projects including c*ography for Paloma Faith's performance at the 2015 Brit Awards as well as directing and c*ographing the opening sequence for the award show in 2016, collaborating with Gareth Pugh for his London and New York Fashion weeks in 2014 and 2017 respectively, and fashion films Soma for COS and Torus for SHOWStudio. In 2016, McGregor directed and c*ographed Selfridges' everyBODY advertising campaign.
He has directed opera (Dido and Aeneas and Acis and Galatea for La Scala/Royal Opera), and c*ographed for theatre (productions at ENO, Old Vic, National Theatre, Royal Court and Donmar Warehouse).
In 2022 McGregor c*ographed ABBA Voyage, a concert featuring virtual avatars of pop band ABBA depicting the group as they appeared in 1977.
McGregor has collaborated with composers (Thomas Adès, Jlin, John Tavener, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Kaija Saariaho, Jon Hopkins, Max Richter, Joby Talbot/The White Stripes, Rokia Traore, Steve Reich, Jamie xx, Scanner), visual artists and designers (Thierry Mugler, Tacita Dean, Lucy Carter, Edmund de Waal, Random International, Olafur Eli*on, Ben Cullen Williams, Mark Wallinger, Vicki Mortimer, Aitor Throup, Shirin Guild), filmmakers and photographers (Ravi Deepres, Ruth Hogben, Nick Knight, Robin Friend), architects (We Not I, John Pawson), and writers (Margaret Atwood, Audrey Niffenegger, Uzma Hameed).
Designed by architects We Not I, Studio Wayne McGregor's creative arts space for making, contains three large dance studios, meeting and collaboration spaces. It also features artwork installations by Haroon Mirza, Daniel Buren (on loan from the Lisson Gallery in London), a work by artist Ben Cullen Williams, original artworks by We Not I based on Josef Albers' 'Structural Constellations' and 'Homages to the Square', and Anni Albers' Study for 'Camino Real', with permission from The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation.
Credits
Awards
Personal
McGregor and his partner, Antoine Vereecken, have restored a modernist house in southwest England.
References
External links
Media related to Wayne McGregor at Wikimedia Commons
- Studio Wayne McGregor
- Royal Opera House
- 'A C*ographer's Process in Real Time', Wayne McGregor, TEDGlobal June 2012
- The Aesthete: Wayne McGregor talks personal taste