Atomos COMPANY M WAYNE Artist Partner Program presents C GREGOR THE CLARICE AT UMD JANUARY 28, 2017 . 8PM KAY THEATRE at The Clarice AARTIST PARTNERP PROGRAMP Artist Partner Program presents COMPANY WAYNE MCGREGOR Atomos PROGRAM This performance will last approximately 65 minutes with no intermission. Concept, Direction and Set .......................................................... Wayne McGregor Choreography ............................................................................................. Wayne McGregor in collaboration with the dancers Music ........................................................................... A Winged Victory For The Sullen Lighting Design........................................................................................................Lucy Carter Film and Set Photography ........................................................................Ravi Deepres Costume Design ..........................................................................................................Studio XO Dancers ...........................................................................................................Catarina Carvalho Travis Clausen-Knight Alvaro Dule Louis McMiller Daniela Neugebauer James Pett Fukiko Takase Po-Lin Tung Jessica Wright Rehearsal Director .......................................................................................Odette Hughes Rehearsal Assistant ...........................................................................Catarina Carvalho Technical Director ........................................................................... Christopher Charles Technical Manager ..............................................................................................Colin Everitt Production Electrician/Relighter ................................................... Ashley Bolitho Production photography .............................................................................Ravi Deepres Join the artists for a conversation with the audience following the performance COVER IMAGE: Company Wayne McGregor dancers Fukiko Takase and Travis Clausen- 2 Knight perform Atomos, photo by Ravi Deprees WHAT IS A BODY? bodies, well, bodies. It is compelling PROGRAM NOTES to be with - kinaesthetically What are the irreducible elements of compelling, not just aesthetically. the human? What are the atoms that You see, Wayne McGregor has long together make humanity present? been concerned to explore the edges Awareness of others, empathy, of what it is to be with another body, memories of our entwined lives, what is elicited by the presence of the obligations and connections other bodies, and how they effect that emerge as part of the relations movement, change and emotion in between us? And then what is a body, us. By introducing an entity that a human body, other than the site and elicits response without being possibility of these relations? human, mimicking some aspects of We feel bodies. They have presence. the human without representing a Their stance, position, intention, human form, his company has been emotion, desire, reach, shame, able to discover (more) of what the passion, expansion and contraction are intelligences and understandings recognisable and compelling because are that bodies have of others’ this movement, this life, is already part presences; what elements they have, of the common shared space. The only what atoms might be combined and way the self is known and experienced recombined to make a dance. is with others, as presences or Wayne McGregor offers an exploration absences. The material that the of the intelligence of the body. With company creates has this quality. his dancers he explores the body in its Wayne McGregor manipulates and ability to elicit response, to feel and organises, challenges and plays with know, to move and be moved, with the edges of what we know about and around others. What speaks to us bodies as human entities. Here is a is a recognition of our own thinking, manipulation of something that is presence, effect and humanity, about what it is to be constituted in organised in ways that ask questions and by the social presences of others. of that inner knowing, of our body as Bodies do not and cannot finish at human movement. the skin because they reach into McGregor insists the body is others’ lives, their minds and their fascinating. He insists it is intelligent. movements, as a necessity. Think for It thinks, solves, makes and creates. a moment about what you know that He strives to recognise and organise is not a part of a relation to other this intelligence - an intelligence people. Then think about your own that is in and between the dancers, body and who and what have grown emergent from the relation not the it, made it real and present. Sensors individual. His work both reveals and now trace and track the responses challenges our sense of what it is to each body has to others and make be a human with others, a body that data of what we feel in another’s is always there in its concern with, presence. The deep experience of constitution by, and presence among these constitutive others in one’s our own and other kinds. Thinking is very experience of space and life is also movement. perhaps the material of the art. James Leach is a social anthropologist As with many of Wayne McGregor’s who works in Papua New Guinea, and works, Atomos has an innovation more recently, with Studio Wayne built into its creation process. In this McGregor on the Arts and Humanities case, the dancers worked with the Research Council funded project presence of an artificially intelligent, ‘Enhancing Choreographic Objects’. He life size, digitally rendered ‘body’ is Professor and Australian Research in the studio. This body mimics the Council Future Fellow at the University growth and movement that makes 3 of Western Australia. WAYNE McGREGOR CBE is a multi-award-winning British choreographer and director. He is Artistic Director of Studio Wayne McGregor, the creative engine of his life-long choreographic enquiry into thinking through and with the body. McGregor has choreographed over 30 works for his own group of dancers, Company Wayne McGregor, the chief exponents of his distinctive visual style. He is also Resident Choreographer at The Royal Ballet. He is Professor of Choreography at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, and has an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Plymouth University and an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from University of Leeds. McGregor is regularly commissioned by and has works in the repertories of the most important ballet companies around ABOUT THE ARTISTS the world, including Paris Opera Ballet, New York City Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet and San Francisco Ballet. He has choreographed for theatre, opera, film (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Legend of Tarzan and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them), music videos (Radiohead, Atoms for Peace and The Chemical Brothers), fashion (Gareth Pugh at New York Fashion Week, 2014), TV (Paloma Faith’s Brit Awards performance, 2015), and site specific performances (Big Dance Trafalgar Square, 2012). McGregor’s work has earned him four Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards, two Time Out Awards, two 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. Most recently he premiered Multiverse as part of a McGregor triple bill for The Royal Ballet, Tree of Codes for Company Wayne McGregor, Woolf Works and Obsidian Tear for The Royal Ballet, Alea Sands for Paris Opera Ballet, and presented Thinking with the Body at Wellcome Collection, an exhibition exploring his collaborative enquiry into choreographic thinking. COMPANY WAYNE McGREGOR was founded in 1992 and became the instrument upon which McGregor evolved his drastically fast and articulate choreographic style. With collaboration at the heart of his practice, McGregor has worked with world-class visual artists, composers, product designers, film-makers, digital artists and architects. Collaboration with science and technology communities has also fuelled choreography mined from radical cognitive research processes. This unique, tenacious questioning between artists and artistic mediums, across the interface of science and art, through the body and mind has ensured that Company Wayne McGregor has remained at the forefront of contemporary arts for 4 the past 20 years. In 2002 Company Wayne McGregor was invited to become a ABOUT THE ARTISTS Resident Company at Sadler’s Wells. The invitation acknowledged them as one of Britain’s most important modern dance companies. Technology has also been crucial in the company’s effort to deliver dance to the public in new ways. Among the company’s groundbreaking projects have been webcasting live performances and exploring broadband (ATM) bi-directional performance where two companies perform simultaneously in different parts of the world. The results are experienced by both live and online audiences. Company Wayne McGregor’s Creative Learning team engages hundreds of young people each year in school and community projects that focus on the creation of new work; in 2012 they led a major new public work to mark the Olympics, Big Dance Trafalgar Square, which involved almost 1000 participants from over 30 groups across London. Regularly supported by the British Council, the company tours frequently to some of the most prestigious world theatres: Het Musiektheater, Amsterdam;