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Wayne McGregor

About this Artist

Born in 1970, WAYNE McGREGOR CBE 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.

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 April 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.

Company Wayne McGregor is McGregor’s ensemble of highly skilled dancers. Founded in 1993, this was the original instrument through which McGregor evolved his distinctive visual style, revealing the movement possibilities of the body in ever more precise degrees of articulation. McGregor has made over thirty works for the company and today it continues to be his laboratory for ambitious and experimental new choreography, touring his work across the UK and around the world. Company Wayne McGregor is Resident Company at Sadler’s Wells, London.

McGregor is also Resident Choreographer at The Royal Ballet, where his productions are acclaimed for their daring reconfiguring of classical language. McGregor is the first and only Resident Choreographer from a contemporary background. He is also regularly commissioned by and has works in the repertories of the most important ballet companies in the world, including Paris Opera Ballet, Munich Ballet, New York City Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Bolshoi Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, NDT 1, Australian Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet and San Francisco Ballet.

He is in demand as a choreographer for theatre (Donmar, Old Vic, National Theatre, Royal Court, Donmar Warehouse) opera (La Scala/Royal Opera, ENO), film (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Legend of Tarzan, Fantastic Beasts 1 & 2, Sing, Mary Queen of Scots), music videos (Radiohead, Thom Yorke, The Chemical Brothers), fashion shows (Gareth Pugh at London Fashion Week 2017), campaigns (everyBODY for Selfridges) 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, Jlin, Olafur Eliasson, Ben Frost, Kaija Saariaho, Thom Yorke, Mark Wallinger, Random International, Jon Hopkins, John Pawson and Mark-Anthony Turnage.

Wayne McGregor is Professor of Choreography at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, has an Honorary Doctor of Science from Plymouth University, an Honorary Doctor of Letters from University of Leeds, 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. He became an Arts Foundation Ambassador in 2019.

McGregor's work has earned him a multitude of awards including 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. 

Over the 2019-2020 season McGregor’s projects include:

  • Two world premieres for Ades & McGregor: A Dance Collaboration with the LA Phil for their centennial celebration at the Music Center, performed by The Royal Ballet and Company Wayne McGregor;
  • Autobiography and Autobiography Edits continuing UK and international tour by Company Wayne McGregor and Jlin;
  • Tree of Codes, Wayne McGregor with Olafur Eliasson and Jamie xx at Opera Bastille, Paris performed by Paris Opera Ballet and Company Wayne McGregor;
  • Sweet Charity at the Donmar Warehouse, choreographed by Wayne McGregor, directed by Josie Rourke, starring Anne-Marie Duff;
  • Woolf Works performed by Alessandra Ferri and La Scala Ballet Company at La Scala, Milan, Italy
  • AfteRite performed by Royal Danish Ballet in Copenhagen, Denmark;
  • Kairos performed by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 60th anniversary US tour;
  • PreSentient performed by Rambert in first revival at Sadler’s Wells
  • Chroma performed by Hong Kong Ballet and Hong Kong Phil, and performed by Dutch National Ballet;
  • Kairos, Sunyata and Borderlands performed in all-McGregor triple bill by Bayerisches Staatsballett in Munich, Germany;
  • Eden | Eden performed by Vienna State Ballet, Austria;
  • The Grange Festival programme of dance curated by Wayne McGregor, Director of Dance@TheGrange, performed by invited artists Company Wayne McGregor, Alessandra Ferri (Outlier by McGregor) and Ballet Black.