ITV Press release: Wayne McGregor on South Bank Show

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THE SOUTH BANK SHOW

WAYNE MCGREGOR: ACROSS THE THRESHOLD

SUNDAY 13 DECEMBER 2009

The South Bank Show follows a year in the life of the choreographer Wayne McGregor.

In 2006, following the huge success of his work Chroma at Covent Garden, there was a frisson of shock when Wayne McGregor was appointed Resident Choreographer at The Royal Ballet. The mantle of Ashton and Macmillan was to be inherited by an iconoclast who was not even an alumnus of The Royal Ballet School… and he had barely had a ballet class in his life.

Melvyn Bragg talks to Wayne McGregor about his unusual route to Covent Garden via being inspired to dance after seeing John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. They discuss the way in which Covent Garden is embracing new directions in art and the relationship between traditional ballet and contemporary dance.

The South Bank Show has gained complete access to Wayne McGregor’s creative work and over the year sees him curate the first Ignite Festival at Covent Garden; and the daunting challenge of creating, rehearsing and presenting two new works on London’s main dance stages within three weeks. One will be his new work as Resident Choreographer of The Royal Ballet,Limen. The other is a new work for Wayne’s own company, Wayne McGregor | Random Dance,Dyad 1909 (part of the Sadler’s Wells world premiere production In the Spirit of Diaghilev); conceived at the University of California’s San Diego Cognitive Science Department and commissioned by Sadler’s Wells, for whom he is an Associate Artist, to celebrate the 100^thanniversary of the Ballet Russes.

The South Bank Show films Wayne McGregor’s scientific research in San Diego, with an experiment in “group cognition”. With the dancers, the scientists there examine how individual brains working closely together combine to create a work of art.

From scientific frontier to baroque opera, Wayne McGregor returns from California to direct a Purcell / Handel double bill, combining his La Scala Dido and Aeneas with a new production ofAcis and Galatea. Surprisingly, it will be the first time that the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet have combined for many years to mount a production.

The film also explores Wayne McGregor’s work with Royal Ballet principals, Edward Watson,Marianela Nuñez, Steven McCrae, Mara Galeazzi, Sarah Lamb and Leanne Benjaminalongside his unusual collaborations with the likes of visual artists and Turner nominees Jane & Louise Wilson, Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho and Japanese conceptual artist Tatsuo Miyajima.

Finally, The South Bank Show follows the choreographer behind the scenes as the two works are revealed to the audience for the first time.

Contributors include: Dame Monica Mason - Director of The Royal Ballet and Judith Mackrell - dance critic for The Guardian