Kevin O’Hare Director of The Royal Ballet Approved, OK to use Kevin O’Hare was born in Yorkshire. Having started dancing at an early age, he trained at The Royal Ballet School from the age of 11 and, through an exchange programme, Royal Danish Ballet. On graduating he joined Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet under the direction of Peter Wright and was promoted to Principal in 1990 at the same time as the company relocated to Birmingham, becoming Birmingham Royal Ballet. Performing across the UK and worldwide, he danced all the leading classical roles including Siegfried, Florimund, Albrecht and Romeo (in the first performance of Kenneth MacMillan’s new production of Romeo and Juliet for BRB), and created the role of Amynta in David Bintley’s full-length Sylvia. He also danced in major works by Ashton, Balanchine, Cranko, MacMillan, Van Manen, Tharp and Tudor. During his performing career he worked with Ashton, De Valois, MacMillan, Bintley and Wright, among others, as well as creating many roles. He has made guest appearances with companies all over the world, and produced many galas and choreographic evenings. He retired from dancing in 2000 to work with the RSC, training in company management. He returned to BRB as Company Manager in 2001 and joined The Royal Ballet as Company Manager in 2004. He was appointed Administrative Director in 2009 and Director in July 2012. Since then, in addition to presenting the Company’s heritage repertory, he has demonstrated his commitment to new work by commissioning many one-act and five full-length ballets. He has also programmed a series of concert performances that, in addition to overseas tours, have presented the Company in places as widespread as Rio de Janeiro, Londonderry, Aldeburgh and Copenhagen. He is a governor of The Royal Ballet School and on the board of Northern Ballet. In July 2014 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Hull. Woolf Works Wayne McGregor Choreographer and Director [email protected] Born in Stockport, he studied dance at Bretton Hall College, University of Leeds, and at the José Limón School, New York. In 1992 he founded Company Wayne McGregor, Resident Company at Sadler’s Wells, for which he has made more than thirty works including Tree of Codes, Atomos, UNDANCE, FAR, Entity, Amu, AtaXia and Nemesis, as well as an exhibition at Wellcome Collection exploring his collaborative enquiry into choreographic thinking, Thinking with the Body. He was appointed Resident Choreographer of The Royal Ballet in 2006. Creations for the Company include Woolf Works, Tetractys, Raven Girl, Ambar, Machina, Carbon Life, Live Fire Exercise, Limen, Infra, Nimbus, Chroma, Engram, Qualia and Symbiont(s). He has created new works for Paris Opera Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, NYCB, Australian Ballet, ENB, NDT1, Zürich Ballet and Rambert, among others. His works are also in the repertories of leading dance companies around the world including the Bolshoi, Royal Danish Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, Boston Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Dutch National Ballet and Mariinsky Ballet. His theatre and opera credits include Closer (Donmar Warehouse), Kirikou et Karaba (Paris), The Woman in White (London, Broadway) and productions at La Scala, Milan, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Scottish Opera, ENO, the Old Vic, NT, Royal Court and for The Royal Opera and the Peter Hall Company. He has created site-specific installations at the Roundhouse, Barbican, Hayward Gallery, Canary Wharf, Pompidou Centre, Secret Cinema, New York Fashion Week and the Brit Awards. He has worked on numerous films and videos including Tarzan, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, MOVEment with Gareth Pugh for AnOther magazine, and the music videos Lotus Flower (Radiohead), Ingenue (Atoms For Peace) and Wide Open (Chemical Brothers). In 2017 he will open Studio Wayne McGregor, a creative space for making at Here East in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. McGregor’s work has won and been nominated for more than fifty awards, including winning two Golden Mask Awards, four Critics’ Circle Awards, two South Bank Show Awards, a Movimentos Award, a Benois de la Danse, two Time Out Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Dance, three Olivier Awards and the Dance Magazine Award. He is Professor of Choreography at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and has an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from Plymouth University. In January 2011 he was appointed a CBE for Services to Dance. Max Richter Composer [email protected] Max Richter studied composition at Edinburgh University, the Royal Academy of Music and with Luciano Berio in Florence. In the early 1990s he co-founded Piano Circus, a six-piano ensemble commissioning and playing works by Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Brian Eno, Julia Wolfe and David Lang, among others. The ensemble went on to release five albums on Decca Classics. In 2002 he released his first solo album, Memoryhouse, on the BBC Late Junction label, performed by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra under Rumon Gamba. He subsequently released four more solo albums – The Blue Notebooks, Songs from Before, 24 Postcards in Full Colour and Infra – on indie label FatCat, and Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in Deutsche Grammophon’s Recomposed series. The record was awarded the Echo Klassik Prize in 2013, and Richter has since signed as an exclusive artist to Deutsche Grammophon. He has a long-standing association with Wayne McGregor: the two have collaborated on works including Infra (Royal Ballet, 2008), the opera Sum (ROH2, 2012) and Kairos (Zürich Ballet, 2014), as well as the installations Rain Room (MOMA and the Barbican) and Future Self (Lunds konsthall). Richter has composed scores for feature films and documentaries, most notably Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir, for which he won the European Film Award in 2008, James Kent’s Testament of Youth and Damon Lindelof’s The Leftovers for HBO. Richter’s next solo album, SLEEP, will be released in September 2015. An eight-hour, overnight cycle of music, the first performances will take place in a specially designed environment created by art collective Random International, with whom Richter has previously collaborated on Rain Room and Future Self. Ciguë Designs [email protected] / [email protected] Founded by a group of architects in 2003, Ciguë’s common purpose is to create and produce architecture, interiors, artworks and objects that combine intellectualism with craftsmanship and intuition. Ciguë is Camille Bénard, Hugo Haas, Guillem Renard and Alphonse Sarthout. The studio now has a team of 15 people from diverse fields working in the Parisian suburbs, in the French countryside and in workshops and on projects around the world. We Not I Designs Mark: [email protected] The project network of architectural practice We Not I extends around the world and collaboratively counters the idea that architecture is the work of a single person. This is the practice’s Royal Ballet debut. We Not I attribute and dedicate the design of ‘Becomings’ to Virginia Woolf, Wayne McGregor and the dancers of The Royal Ballet. Moritz Junge Costume designer [email protected] His opera and ballet work includes Cavalleria rusticana/Pagliacci (Metropolitan Opera, New York), Les Troyens, Aida and The Tempest (Royal Opera), Don Carlo (Bolshoi), L’Anatomie de la sensation (Paris Opera Ballet), Outlier (NYCB), Daphne (La Monnaie, Brussels), Messiah (ENO, Opéra de Lyon), Dyad 1929 (Australian Ballet), Renature (NDT) and La Cenerentola (Glyndebourne). For The Royal Ballet his work includes Live Fire Exercise, Limen, Infra (also Joffrey Ballet, Mariinsky Ballet) and Chroma (also Alvin Ailey, Boston Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, San Francisco Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, Bolshoi, DNB). Designs for theatre include In the Republic of Happiness (Royal Court), The Kitchen, Dido, Queen of Carthage and The Hour we Knew Nothing of Each Other (NT), Judgment Day (Almeida) and All About my Mother (Old Vic). He designed costumes for the London 2012 Paralympics opening ceremony. He was the overall winner of the Linbury Prize for Stage Design, 2001. Lucy Carter Lighting designer [email protected] She trained in dance and drama at the Roehampton Institute, University of Surrey, and then in lighting design at Central School of Speech and Drama. She has worked as an international lighting designer for over twenty years and in 2008 she received the Knight of Illumination Award for Dance for Chroma. She has worked with ballet companies throughout the world including San Francisco Ballet, NYCB, Australian Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, the Bolshoi, National Ballet of Canada, Royal Danish Ballet, Scottish Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, Boston Ballet and the Joffrey Ballet. Recent productions with long-term collaborator McGregor include Woolf Works, Tetractys and Raven Girl. Recent opera includes Fiddler on the Roof (Grange Park Opera), La finta giardinera (Glyndebourne), Peter Grimes on Aldeburgh beach and Lohengrin (WNO, Polish National Opera). Recent theatre includes Husbands and Sons, Medea and Emil and the Detectives (NT). Ravi Deepres Film designer [email protected] An award-winning artist, filmmaker and photographer, his work deals with themes of identity and psychology expressed through conceptual documentary and choreographic approaches and aesthetics. He is a winner of the Great North Run Moving Image commission. He regularly collaborates with renowned choreographers, directors and institutions to create new languages of artistic expression. His work has been exhibited and commissioned by prestigious theatres, festivals and galleries around the world to critical acclaim, including the Paris Opéra, Magnum Photos, Impressions Gallery, Ikon Gallery, Recontres d’Arles, the Royal Opera House, Channel 4 and the BBC. Chris Ekers Sound designer [email protected] He began his career with Autograph Sound Recording; during this time he was involved in many West End musical productions including Song and Dance, Starlight Express and Chess.