Wayne McGregor - Choreographer HARDtalk

provide -- prevent serious crime and terrorism. The move has been

criticised by many. Now it is time for HARDtalk.

The rock star of ballet, the bad boy of Byley, ballet's highest

profile nerd. Wayne McGregor is known for pushing the boundaries of

an art form, only associated with easy on the I entertainment. He has

been the resident choreographer at the Royal Ballet for some time. He

continues to push his audiences and his dancers to the very limit,

constantly concocting new ways of marrying ballet with science, art

and architecture. Is that why he remains a maverick inside the

Wayne McGregor, welcome to HARDtalk. Thank you. You have made headlines

for 20 years in the dance world. A mover, a shaker, a real headline

maker. One of the things you can do in life is what you believe in. I

am interested in developing my work. It is not me who describes myself

in that way. You are someone -- someone who writes a lot about you

is Luke Jennings. He says of your agenda that you have always try to

push dance into new and uncharted areas, beyond the limits of

classical geometry and prove that by, in so doing, no-one will fall

of the edge of the Earth. What is important is that dance should

incorporate the real world. I am fascinated by the technology of the

body. I am interested in pushing the body. I am pushing the dancers

to challenge themselves, not only with their technical instruments

but with their creative capacities. I am interested in pushing

audiences to look can see different things. I am interested in looking

at the way they engage with the product in new ways at may be

taking on a different intellectual journey. Dance is a contemporary

art form. -- maybe take them on. It should keep challenging people to

understand their world differently. That is one of the challenges of

art. Many important points to do with your work, the relationship

with dance, the body and the audience. I will come back to those

points. We're sitting in advance studio. We are in the ballet house

in London's Covent Garden. What about pushing technology and

investigation, is that your brand? I do not think there is a

restricted brand. This is a creative organisation. It is made

up of individuals with fantastic ideas. The big theatres and opera

houses have the capacity and do them for this kind of Endeavour. It

is not that you are all the sudden decrying the heritage that exists.

These are points of departure. What is lovely about this theatre is you

can have both of those in a week. Classical and cutting edge. The

audience is acclimatising to that. You are able to, but how welcome

visit by the establishment, the Swan Lake diehards, when you were

brought in as the choreographer, Monica Mason felt obliged to say

that you were a challenge to the company. Have you been a challenge?

I hope so. I am here to create a different type of conversation.

That is valuable. As a hunger and an appetite, they have to engage

with the real work, living artists, do things that were not possible in

the past. That is the wonderful thing about working with bodies,

like people. You are working with incredibly well trained individuals

who have dedicated their lives to an art form which, for them, is the

most important thing in their lives. You have to have people in front of

you who challenge you to think differently and explore new ways

and put people in a different way. Talking about doing the impossible,

you have done that by becoming the resident choreographer here cut the

Royal Ballet the very first person to come from a non ballet

background, contemporary dance, the first non- in-house product. The

Jew face opposition? Not in the building. I was working with open

arms. When there is a type of attitude or agenda in an

organisation, you have assumptions. We all look for evidence to

reaffirm our opinion before we look at something openly. There is

always a little bit of people who don't like the work. That will

happen. I don't like certain types of film-makers. There is a taste

issue. One of the things about my residency is it is not just about

my work, it is about the creativity and the organisation and doing

things in ways that have not been done before. One of my big drives

has been to offer opportunities to younger choreographers to have the

confidence to start making things. That will be part of my legacy here.

It is not just about my work, and is about encouraging others. I

believe anyone can do it, you can make a dance, anyone can do it. You

need to have the skills, understanding and knowledge to

start. You are brought a new spirit of the house. A celebrated cultural

commentator wrote that the world was a part from the warm, central

heating classrooms and the sandwiches off Covent Garden. He

says you engage with Concert, a binding cruelty and the technical

revolution. The question is, how did you get here? Yukon from

northern England, Stockport. Your parents wanted to pursue to be

academic. Where did this drive from dance come from? I did not set out

to be the resident choreographer at the Royal Ballet. I knew I had grid

pagans who gave me the confidence to try anything. I was one of those

young people who tried a lot of different sports and clubs. -- grid

parents. I grew up in the 1970s, John Travolta, Rees, these were the

type of things I wanted to do. I got the bug. As soon as you have an

understanding of your body and you have your body working in a

language that you're not familiar with, it is motivating and exciting.

That kept me going. Then I went into amateur dramatics at

university. My parents were keen for me to have a strong academic

body of work. They would support the extra-curricular stuff as a

hobby. In terms of an education, it was quite broad and well-rounded.

You have stayed in the world of academia, even within dance. We

will go back to that. You trajectory, I love that along the

way you organise tea dances for a local council in the UK, in

Redbridge Council, you started your dance company, Random Dance, at the

age of 22 and it is still going strong. It is youthful arrogance. I

did a degree in semiotics. I came back to the UK. It is hard to

become a choreographer and make a living out of it. I came back to

London and got this first job in Redbridge and my first job was to

animate dance activity in a range of contexts. That was with schools,

community groups, bilingual learners. One of my favourite

sessions was the weekly tea dance and a Thursday afternoon. For me,

what is interesting, the first encounter I had was with an amazing

post-modern choreographer called William Forsyth. It was through an

elderly lady who told me I had to go and see this incredible American

experimental choreographer, rolled and precise. That, for me, was

incredible. -- William Forsyth. You never know what will come from

engaging with people. Being a choreographer, you have to interact

with other people. One of the most powerful things about dance is its

opportunity to be able to make cohesive groups of people

collaborate, discuss and share ideas. It does not matter what the

context of that is, it can be acted as, hip hop, ballet, contemporary,

the process is similar. That is why I find it easy to slip around all

of those contexts. You are still slipping around. You might think

that you may close yourself of here and play with these amazing and the

pressure of dancers but you continue with Random Dan's Aja work

outside the world of dance with art installations all the world. There

are pop videos, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, you are going

into the madness of the Olympic Games, London 2012, the festival,

The Big Dance, that is part of the Olympic festival in the UK. You

will takeover to father's career and get people like me,

enthusiastic but talentless dancers involved. -- takeover Trafalgar

Square. What do you get from that? Everyone has a talent for dance but

it is undiscovered. I would love to give everyone the opportunity to

see if dance is for them. It is not that, first of all, I would love to

have the first dance for young people. Dancing is important for us.

We have to engage with lots of people as choreographers. In the

large-scale events, there are experts, choreographers, directors,

they teach the dance to a whole lot of people and they do it. That is

one way of working. You saw that at the Beijing Olympics. Mass

participation, incredible accuracy, detail. One of the things I want to

do is encourage people's creative capacity. I want people to make

their own dances. For The Big Dance, I want to have thousands of dancers,

each making their own choreography with a structure so that each

person in that project has made their own dance and are each a

choreographer. That shift of power and ownership of material is

different to learning from someone else. Let's talk about your

choreography. It is a world away from what one might expect of the

Royal Ballet, the romantic costumes and storylines and movement of Swan

Lake. With the Nutcracker, your work is known for a jagged, rapid

movement. Often an absence of narrative. Some have said, I think

you said, that has been inspired by your own body when you work. I have

got a very long body. I am interested in fracturing lines and

dysfunctional behaviour. I think one of the things about

choreography is working with expert bodies, you're able to deviate the

body in strange ways. That's strange is has an inherent beauty.

The body is capable of so much. -- that strangeness. I have to explore

that territory. I grew up in the age of computers and the Internet.

That way of thinking, and debt -- a dendritic way of thinking, you

start of some were quickly Adjei Musa Morrell's. It is lot a linear

way of thinking. It is amazing how you work in the world. -- you start

of somewhere quickly, -- back neuroscience is connected with the

body. You find interesting collaborators that you would not

have had access to. I think in a way there is a fantastic function

of new technology and the Internet in bringing people together,

interesting people together and they would never have been able to

have that collision of forces. That is inspiring. We talked about your

academic background and how that is ongoing. You have worked in

collaboration with scientists at Cambridge University, as San Diego,

he seemed fascinated by this connection between the mind and

body and dance. -- you seem. You have been described by critics as a

new Renaissance man. Not at liberty So much of what happens cognitively

is invisible. Some only talk about dancing terms of non-verbal

communication. I am here sitting talking to about dancing. When I'm

in the studio I am talking about dancers, two of is that ideas from

them. I am using intonation, sonification to shape movement. I

wondered, what is going on creatively in the mind when you are

organising the mind? Through dancing itself, or creating things.

There is a cognitive, create -- creative technique. You can learn

ways you can be creative and think with the body. We do that naturally.

The job of the brain is to make models for things, to look for

patterns. To do routines. If I am to get out of the habit of making

the things I always do, if the dancers are going to get away from

when they are improvising from things they're always tend to do,

you have to ask, what are some of the mental models that make that

happen? As soon as I can do that I can subvert and challenge it and

take it somewhere else. How would that translate for example into a

work of yours, kronur, asked what - - which has known as fast-track you

here. Minimalist in sight and sound. How does that translate into his

theory of yours? It translate to do with the capacity, what is the

capacity of eight dancer? The capacity is not an inherent way of

moving. It is actually a cognitive map. To do complex core nations

with my body going in different directions by have to train my mind

to see it and to do it. With something like that work, that kind

of rewiring of a dancer's attitude to moving is something that happens

in the making of that. How did the dancers react to that? You say

rewire. One of your favourite ballet dancers said that working

with you makes you feel like your brain has been rewired. But some

have been disturbed by it. Darcey Bussell says, you need Wayne

MacGregor, he is very nice. Many see his steps and you say, he is

not so nice. You push them. have to. To keep engaged in the art

form you are working in you have to be really hungry and pushed. This

is not a place for complacency. It is a place for experimentation. It

is like in anything. Some dancers are receptive and open to the

challenge, curious, wanting to engage in the relationship with you

and will do anything to facilitate that. I am not a dictator at

progress. I am very collaborative in the way I elicit these moods.

Dancers offer things as well. They offer opportunities and options.

And then you get the dancers who are not into it. They're quite

closed it down and have a particular view of the world.

that depend on their training? Is there a difference between those

who are trained in classical compared with contemporary? Perhaps

even nationalities? I think it is partly the training institutions

internationally and how different they trained their young people. It

is not so much a genre specific. It is not about styles. The

contemporary dance world has always had its students' learning about

creativity and improvising in a way that often ballet schools have not.

But that is changing now. But here, I think it does not matter. Another

thing is the individual. Some individuals are curious and open

wind -- open-minded and some do not. I always work with the ones who do.

How far do you push them? The dance world is known for exotic -- for

exhausting them, for pushing them to the edge. You read define what

is possible for a body. In that do you feel a pastoral responsibility?

On HARDtalk we spoke to another ballet star -- another ballet staff.

He spoke of the pain and the sacrifice as well as the jury.

course. I am working with him at the moment. Of course there is pain

and sacrifice. But dancers are not empty vessels with no intelligence

to be able to have that conversation with you. We have a

stereotyped view of a dancer that they are waiting for the master to

come in and have all of this information and they will do

anything they can to make it work and will not say anything. That

they suffer in silence. That is just not true. The dancers I have

worked with for a long period of time now, they want to come back.

They asked, what more have you got for me? There seems to be a

voracious appetite for them to be pushed in different directions. I

don't experience any resistance. I just don't. Some people find that

uncomfortable to listen to. But wherever I go in the world I don't

experience that. By Shakespeare is the opposite. Passionate

individuals who are desperate for you to be with them. The dancers

you meet having this thirst and to learn. But what about your

audiences? Are they as thirsty? I am thinking here... There is a

Telegraph Review, for example, of one of your works. It was linked to

your scientific research. They write, there is great theory behind

Wayne McGregor's new piece, but it does not necessarily make great

dance. It is interesting. That is one person's point of view. I tend

not to listen to critics in that race. I'm not them, they are not me.

What is important is that... It is interesting for me when I see the

lineage of the work. A reviewer might write about a piece and their

first confrontation with it in a particular way. Two years later

when it comes to London again it is different. They say that I have

changed the choreography, the structure, I adapted it. Actually,

the piece is the same and what has changed is the reviewer. They have

had the sense an understanding of the peace and have gone to a

journey and faced it in a different way. Sometimes when you face

something for the first time, you have all of the questions about it.

And those questions come out in a particular piece of writing. For

some people it is a step too far. They don't have a feeling for it.

But I know because at the number of audiences that keep coming to see

the work all over the world that there is something that attracts

them. There is something that they find maybe. There are things that

they find emotional in the work. That gives me confidence to make

more. Talking to you about your theory and the passion you have for

it, would you say that the process is more important than the product?

What is interesting about that question is, it is more whether or

not the process has to be communicated with the audience and

how much they understand it -- have to understand it before they watch

the peace? Some audiences do not like to hear about the process. I

am totally OK with that. What is difficult is when you read about

the process and then overlaid that onto the object of the dance and

look at through a filter. As an audience member you have to make a

conscious decision about whether or not you want to watch the object

fresh, with no information around it, or whether you want to watch it

through a filter. If you simply want entertained? The Nutcracker,

something must provoking. The White Cromer. You can come to many of my

pieces and just enjoy the visceral thrill of dancers moving for

anomaly in space. Or an interesting collision between design and space

-- design and choreography. My job as a choreographer is to work

choreographic lights in relation to music. All of those hierarchies are

unbalanced, if you like. But if you want to come and experience an

event, to have something that gives you a direct moment, then

absolutely calm without reading of the theory. Hopefully it should

still grab you and make you want to see it again. Let me put to you a

quote from a celebrated choreographer who says,

choreographer is easier than using. Just go and do and don't seem so

much about it. -- easier than you think. That is interesting. Often I

go into the studio and it just do. That is a practice in itself. He

grew up in an area where communication technologies were not

how they are now. He has a different way of thinking about how

dance is made. The revelation - Mackie replied Jacques -- he

revolutionise the way dance was made at this time. Another of his

famous quotes is that in ballet the warm and dancer is the most

important, the most celebrated. Now if you said that to any male

performer they would have a worry with that. -- the woman. It is my

job to test some of those stereotypes from the pass. To find

new ways. I don't think he would make the pieces he made then now.

You feel you still have a long way to go? I have got so far to go. So

many exciting possibilities. It is just opening up. The more we start