Dance and science, arts and technology – Wayne McGregor is an adventurous experimentalist with no limits to what could serve as a source of inspiration for his work. His choreographies show his unique style, impossible to categorise. The triple bill evening Portrait Wayne McGregor consisting of the three individual pieces Kairos, Sunyata and Borderlands.
Kairos opens with stroboscope light. In ancient Greek the word “Kairos” means the aspect of taking decisions, the very moment when a decision to take action is made. Heavy philosophic luggage, but on the other hand, the term simply means “weather”. The atmosphere is created and pushed by Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons arranged by experimental composer Max Richter and played by the Bayerisches Staatsorchester conducted by Koen Kessels. The ten dancers appear as storm and wind, their bodies circulate like tornados, developing their own centrifugal force.
Sunyata was created by Wayne McGregor together with the Bayerisches Staatsballett in spring 2018. He started with four dancers, basically in an empty space. It is not the first time that McGregor produces a piece to the music of Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. Circle Map (2012) is a spherical composition based on six poems of Persian Sufi mystic Rumi. The language is transformed into music, so that both music and lyrics shape the choreography. The result on stage reminds us of an original Farsi lettering with its strong dynamics and curved parts and peaks.
Where do the borders run? Where does my body end, my movements, my thinking and feeling? Borderlands always consistens of at least a pair of two; a counterpart, something to delimit yourself against is always necessary. But at the same time it depicts areas that overlap and intersect. A state which is neither here nor there. The light (design by Lucy Carter) transmits the colours, which gain special importance in the piece, as the production is inpiried by the work of Bauhaus artist Josef Albers and his theories on colour and perception. McGregor's choreographical approach is similiar to that, by transfering the liminal status into dance.