Wayne McGregor CBE

SIR WAYNE McGREGOR CBE

'AN ADVENTURESOME EXPERIMENTER WITH A RESTLESS MIND, INTENT ON PUSHING HIS DISPARATE AUDIENCE, HIS COLLABORATORS AND HIMSELF.'

The New York Times

Born in 1970, Sir Wayne McGregor is a multi award winning British choreographer and director, internationally renowned for trailblazing innovations in performance that have radically redefined dance in the modern era. Driven by an insatiable curiosity about movement and its creative potentials, his experiments have led him into collaborative dialogue with an array of artistic forms, scientific disciplines, and technological interventions. The startling and multi-dimensional works resulting from these interactions have ensured McGregor’s position at the cutting edge of contemporary arts for over twenty-five years.

TED Talk - A Choreographer's Creative Process in Real Time, Courtesy of TED Conferences LLC

In 1992 McGregor founded Random Dance (now Company Wayne McGregor), his ensemble of highly skilled dancers and laboratory for ambitious and experimental new choreography, revealing the movement possibilities of the body in ever more precise degrees of articulation. McGregor has made over thirty works for the company, which have and continue to tour across the UK and around the world. Company Wayne McGregor is Resident Company at Sadler’s Wells, London.

Studio Wayne McGregor is the creative engine of McGregor’s life-long choreographic enquiry into thinking through and with the body. It encompasses his own touring company of dancers, Company Wayne McGregor; creative collaborations across dance, film, music, visual art, technology and science; and highly specialized learning, engagement and research programmes. In March 2017 Studio Wayne McGregor moved into its own newly created studio space at Here East in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, a shared space for making where the creative brains of the day can exchange knowledge and invent together.

'THE DETAILS OF McGREGOR'S RESEARCH AND PROCESSES MAKE HIM A SERIOUS EXPERIMENTER IN MOVEMENT AND MOVEMENT SYSTEMS'

- Deborah Jowitt, DanceBeat

Since 2006 McGregor has been Resident Choreographer at the Royal Ballet, the first choreographer from a contemporary dance background to be invited into the role. Here his productions are acclaimed for their daring reconfiguring of classical language. He has made over 20 works for the Royal Ballet, from Chroma (2006) set to music by The White Stripes and Joby Talbot and winner of the Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production, to Woolf Works (2015), an "exhilarating and ravishingly expressive" (Guardian) full length ballet based on the life and writings of Virginia Woolf.

'A PIONEER IN EXPLOITING THE LINKS BETWEEN HIS ART, AND THE SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENT THAT HAVE REVOLUTIONISED 21ST-CENTURY LIFE.'

The Financial Times

McGregor is regularly commissioned by and has works in the repertories of the most important dance companies in the world including Paris Opera Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Bayerisches Staatsballett Munich, New York City Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, Australian Ballet, San Francisco Ballet and the Royal Danish Ballet. He is in demand as a choreographer for theatre (Donmar Warehouse, Old Vic, National Theatre, Royal Court), opera (English National Opera, La Scala, Royal Opera House), film (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Legend of Tarzan, Fantastic Beasts film series, Sing, Mary Queen of Scots, Audrey), music videos (Radiohead's Lotus Flower, Atoms for Peace's Ingenue, The Chemical Brothers' Wide Open), fashion (Soma for COS, Gareth Pugh at London Fashion Week 2014 and 2017, MOVEment for AnOther Magazine, Torus for SHOWStudio), campaigns (everyBODY for Selfridges, Boots No 7) and TV (The 2016 Brit Awards Opening Sequence, Paloma Faith’s Brit Awards performance 2015). Some of the long list of artists who have partnered with McGregor through more than twenty years of collaborative multi-disciplinary work include John Tavener, Audrey Niffenegger, Jamie xx, Max Richter, Olafur Eliasson, Kaija Saariaho, Lucy Carter, Ben Frost, Jlin, Thom Yorke, Mark Wallinger, Random International, Jon Hopkins, John Pawson and Mark-Anthony Turnage.

'ART, MUSIC, PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE, CURRENT EVENTS... WHEN McGREGOR IS WORKING AT HIS BEST, THEY COME TOGETHER IN A MAGNIFICENTLY STIMULATING WHOLE.'

The Telegraph

Wayne McGregor is Professor of Choreography at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and has Honorary Doctorates from Plymouth University (2013), University of Leeds (2016), University of Chester (2019), University of the Arts London (2019), and Royal College of Art (2023), and 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 Association. McGregor topped the list for dance in The Progress 1000 celebration of London’s most influential people in 2018. In 2021 he was appointed the Director of Dance for the Venice Biennale, a position he will hold until 2024.

McGregor's work has earned him a multitude of awards including four Critics' Circle 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 was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Prix de Lausanne. In 2024, His Majesty The King appointed Wayne McGregor a Knighthood in the 2024 Birthday Honours List.

Wayne McGregor on HARDtalk, 2012. Courtesy of BBC.

Images by Vutheara Kham with Antoine Neufmars; Ravi Deepres; Rick Guest and Tristram Kenton.

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