Infra GCSE Resource

ARTIST PROCESSES
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Left: Lucy Carter
Right: Moritz Junge
‘If you can be free enough to experience
it in the moment, it hopefully releases
something new in you.’
Wayne McGregor, BBC Bitesize interview, 2010
Creating movement motifs
McGregor enjoys working with The Royal Ballet
dancers because of their ‘emotional capacity,
degrees of freedom and abandon in their
movement’. He selects dancers to work with who
are curious, open to explore and willing to try
something new.
The Infra motifs were developed from a prosaic,
pedestrian language exploring what people do
every day such as walking, running, sitting and
gestural actions. These pedestrian actions were
then developed further. More actions (including
turns, elevations and adding different body parts)
were explored to make richer movement.
These motifs were both combined and contrasted
with more traditional and codified ballet movement
vocabulary. Throughout Infra McGregor pushes
the classical language to its extreme, this is
particularly evident with the use of the back.
In contrast to ballet where the spine tends to be
held straight or move in set curved pathways,
in Infra McGregor requires the dancers to fully
articulate the back in all directions: referring to this
as ‘almost misbehaving’.
Stage 4
Lighting design and costume design
At the same time as working with the dancers, set
and sound design, McGregor also thinks about the
lighting and costume design for the work.
Lighting designer Lucy Carter designed the lighting
for all of Wayne McGregor’s previous works. He
describes Carter as being very instinctive as a
designer and as well as collecting resources and
information to fuel her creative process. She often
experiments in the theatre, trying out the lights
with the dancers in real time. This then inspires and
develops McGregor’s choreographic ideas further.
McGregor has worked with costume designer
Moritz Junge many times and praises his ability to
work with a broad spectrum of styles. For Infra the
costume design was influenced by Julian Opie’s
digital people and the starting point for costume
was ‘pedestrian’ clothes, particularly when dressing
the crowd of people who walk across the stage
during the highlight in section 7b. It is important
that the costumes are designed to work with
the dancers’ bodies, aiding their movement and
showing off their extraordinary skills.
Stage 5
Solving the problem, putting the jigsaw together
The rest of the creative process involves all
collaborators working together, discussing and
sharing ideas and developments, observing
McGregor and the dancers in rehearsal, selecting
and structuring material and eventually piecing
together the puzzle, synthesizing information
to create a unified piece that can be realised,
rehearsed, refined and performed.