FAR: The UK’s Wayne McGregor | Random Dance dazzles with intellectual inquiry, stunning visuals, and extraordinary dancing
Dance wunderkind Wayne McGregor takes a fascinating creative journey, drawing on a radical cognitive research process. FAR is an abbreviation for “Flesh in the Age of Reason”, the title of the late Roy Porter's 2003 book exploring 18th-century thought concerning the relationship of mind and body. Porter argued that the mind-body question is less about the immortal soul than about the possibility of diverting attention from the inconvenience of flesh -- of disembodying the voice of reason.
Also inspired by the Age of Enlightenment (in which 17th-and 18th-century intellectuals wished to reform society using reason and promote skepticism and the scientific method) and by 18th century French philosopher Denis Diderot's first encyclopaedia, the resulting choreography is physical and immediate, powerful and compelling, yet intensely cerebral.
Since its premiere in 2010, FAR has received worldwide acclaim. The superb score by Brian Eno collaborator Ben Frost proceeds from sampled Vivaldi to Icelandic electronica to a bestial electronic growl. Extraordinary visuals include a computerized pinboard of 3,200 flickering LED lights, its elegant mutations suggesting star-fields and neural pathways. Radiating its own pure, cerebral beauty, FAR seems like an exhibition of all variations of human behaviour, as filtered through the ideas of René Descartes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the Marquis de Sade.
The New Yorker (October 31, 2011) wrote "The choreography is high-speed and relentless, the lighting designs dazzling, and the bodies sinuous and endlessly torqued … it must be Wayne McGregor, the boy genius of English dance." London’s The Daily Telegraph (November 18, 2010) wrote, "A work with grand deconstructive designs, performed with stupendous commitment by McGregor’s 10-strong Random Dance troupe, and exquisitely lit and designed, too... a prodigiously gifted artist." Judith Mackrell wrote in London’s The Guardian (November 19, 2010), “There is material of heart-stopping beauty …the choreography is remarkable and the dancers superb...often exhilarating, dazzling. As pure dance, it is some of McGregor's finest invention ... like no dance I've ever imagined or seen."
Wayne McGregor C.B.E. is a multi-award-winning British choreographer, renowned for his physically testing choreography and groundbreaking collaborations across dance, film, music, visual art, technology, and science. He is a frequent creator of new work for La Scala, Milan; Paris Opera Ballet; Nederlands Dans Theatre; Stuttgart Ballet; and New York City Ballet. He is also movement director for theatre, film (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) and music video (Radiohead's “Lotus Flower”). His recent productions include new work for the Royal Ballet and two works as part of the Cultural Olympiad's London 2012 Festival: the National Gallery’s Metamorphosis: Titian 2012 and a large-scale public dance work, Big Dance Trafalgar Square, featuring 1000 performers from 30 dance groups. In 2013, San Francisco Ballet held the world premiere of McGregor’s Borderlands and he also premiered his new Rite of Spring on the Bolshoi Ballet.
See a video excerpt of FAR here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrai3NGDUMM
Wayne McGregor | Random Dance perform FAR in the Theatre on Wednesday April 23 at 7:30 p.m.