Retour en Avant / Past Forward Biennale de la Danse Lyon - France

ses : l’Art Foundation en 1998, le Time OutAward en 2001 et en 2003, et un OlivierAward pour sa performance 2Human en2004.Entity: A DiptychEntity: A diptych confronte l’énergierythmée du Quatuor Debussy aux aspéritéssonores et aux mélodies électroniquesde Jon Hopkins. Associant la danse etla science, le concept d’Entity est né del’affinité que Random a entretenue avec lapensée scientifique. Le diptyque est le fruitd’une collaboration entre McGregor et Scottde Lahunta, de l’University of California deSan Diego, en association avec The CaliforniaInstitutes for Science and Innovation,The Neurosciences Institute, Salk Institute etThe Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind. Entravaillant avec des chercheurs interdisciplinairesen sciences cognitives - englobant lapsychologie, les neurosciences, la linguistique,l’interaction homme-ordinateur, larobotique, etc. McGregor et son équipe ontcréé un système d’agents intelligents capablesd’apprendre et de trouver des solutionsoriginales à des problèmes chorégraphiques.En poussant les limites du corps technologique,un dialogue complexe, entre le cognitifet le physique, soulève des questions sur lanature même de l’être humain.Infos +Première en FranceCompagnie invitée à la Biennale 2004www.randomdance.orgWayne McGregorMcGregor was born in Stockport in 1970 andstudied dance at University College Bretton Halland at the José Limon School in New York. In1992 he founded his own company, recentlyretitled Wayne McGregor | Random Dance , andin the same year was appointed choreographerin-residenceat The Place in London. He is thefirst modern dance choreographer in the historyof the Royal Ballet to be appointed as the company’sresident choreographer.Random was one of many small-scale companiesemerging in the 1990s, but two features madeMcGregor’s work stand out. The first was theunique quality of his vocabulary. This had itsorigins in McGregor’s own long, lean and supplephysique, and in its capacity to register movementwith peculiar sharpness and speed. At oneextreme McGregor’s dancing was a jangle oftiny, fractured angles, at the other it was a whirlof seemingly boneless fluidity. The second outstandingfeature of the work was its embrace ofnew technology. McGregor started playing withcomputers from the age of seven and it wasnatural for him to incorporate the cyber worldinto his own choreography. Collaborating withstate-of-the-art designers McGregor experimentedwith projecting computer generated imagesonto the stage. In Sulphur 16 (1998) Random’sdancers were dwarfed by the presence of ashimmering virtual giant that was projected onthe space above them. Later in the work, a companyof digital figures appeared to weave andshimmer among the live dancers like ghostly visitorsfrom another age. In Aeon (2000) the effectof digitally created landscapes made the dancersappear to be inhabiting other dimensions andother worlds. On specific occasions, McGregorused technology to alter the conditions underwhich his work was viewed. 53 Bytes (1997)was created for simultaneous performance bytwo groups of dancers, located in Berlin andCanada. Audiences in both countries watchedthe transatlantic performance by live satellitelink. In 2000 McGregor explored the possibilitiesof an even more global public by transmitting alive performance of his Trilogy Installation overthe internet. In all these ways McGregor haspioneered a future for dance transformed bytechnology.In 2002, Random was invited to become thecompany in residence at Sadler’s Wells. McGregorcelebrated his new home with Nemesis(2002), which played with a very different kindof technology. Mid-way through, its cast weretransformed into a hybrid super race by havinglong mechanical limbs attached to their arms.Part weapon, part prosthetic body part, thesestrangely jointed, freakishly articulate deviceslent the dancers and the dance a mysterious,beautiful menace.At the same time as his work for Wayne McGregor| Random Dance, McGregor contributesto others non-dance productions (the NationalTheatre’s A Little Night Music, Harry Potterand the Goblet of Fire for Warner Bros). Healso creates new ballets for other companies,including San Francisco Ballet, Paris Ballet, NDT Iand English National Ballet. McGregor made hisdirectorial debut at La Scala, Milan, with Didoand Aeneas in 2007, and, later on that year, atthe Maison de la Danse with the musical Kirikou& Karaba. He has also made numerous worksfor television.McGregor draws direct inspiration from his dancersbut music is important to his process too.The tense futuristic worlds of his earliest workswere made edgier by their accompaniment byabrasive club music; however, in his later works,McGregor began to exploit the emotionalcolour of an increasingly wide variety of music,regularly commissioning new composers to writepieces for his work.Amu was inspired by McGregor’s interest inthe functions and the symbolism of the heart,and has been part of his ongoing study of theinternal workings of the human body. In 2004Wayne McGregor was appointed ResearchFellow with the Neuroscience Department ofCambridge University, where he was engaged ina project to investigate the relationship betweenbrain and physical states in the creative processesof dance.McGregor’s experiments have earned him astring of nominations and awards, including anArts Foundation Fellowship in 1998; two TimeOut Awards for Outstanding Achievement, in2001 and 2003; and an Olivier Award in 2004.Entity: A DiptychEntity: A diptych of works by visionary choreographerWayne McGregor, pitches the rhythmicenergy of the Debussy Quartet against the sonicextremes of Jon Hopkins melody-led electronica.Entity is a new dance/science collaboration thathas evolved from Random’s past and intimateengagement with scientific thought. For thisdiptych, McGregor collaborated with Scott deLahunta and the University of California at SanDiego in association with the California Institutesfor Science and Innovation, the NeurosciencesInstitute, Salk Institute and the Kavli Institute forBrain and Mind. Working with researchers fromthe interdisciplinary fields of cognitive science –psychology, neurosciences, linguistics, humancomputerinteraction, robotics etc. – McGregorand his team built Entity – a “learning” agent,or collection of agents – which can generateunique solutions to choreographic problems,while continually testing the capacities of thetechnological body in a complex cognitive andphysical debate that questions the very nature ofwhat it is to be human.Extra info:French PremiereThe company performed at the2004 Biennalewww.randomdance.org19