Autobiography

Duration: 1 hour 20 minutes

Premiere: October 4, 2017

Sadler’s Wells (London)

Concept and Direction: Wayne McGregor

Choreography: Wayne McGregor

in collaboration with the dancers

Music: Jlin

Set Design and Projection: Ben Cullen Williams

Lighting Design: Lucy Carter

Costume Design: Aitor Throup

Dramaturgy: Uzma Hameed

Algorithm: Nick Rothwell

Dancers:

Rebecca Bassett-Graham, Jordan James Bridge,

Travis Clausen-Knight, Louis McMiller, Daniela Neugebauer,

Jacob O’Connell, James Pett, Fukiko Takase, Po-Lin Tung,

Jessica Wright

Rehearsal Director: Odette Hughes

Technical Director: Christopher Charles

Technical Manager: Ashley Bolitho

Production Electrician / Relighter: Genevieve Giron

Technician: Niamh Percy

Lighting Programmer: Jenny Kershaw

Sound Realisation: Nick Sagar

Animator: Tom Scott

Ongoing Scientific Partners:

Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute; EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute;

Connecting Science – Wellcome Genome Campus Public Engagement;

Wellcome Genome Campus Society and Ethics Research; University Medical

Centre Utrecht

Produced: Studio Wayne McGregor

Co-produced: Sadler’s Wells, London, UK; Les Théâtres de la Ville de

Luxembourg; Edinburgh International Festival, UK; Festspielhaus St Pölten,

Austria; Carolina Performing Arts at The University of North Carolina at Chapel

Hill, USA; Movimentos Festwochen der Autostadt in Wolfsburg, Germany.

Co-commissioned: West Kowloon Cultural District, Hong Kong; Festival

Diaghilev. P.S., St Petersburg, Russia; Centro Cultural Vila Flor, Guimarães,

Portugal; Seattle Theatre Group, USA (music); Trinity Laban Conservatoire

of Music and Dance, London, UK.

Music by Jlin in partnership with Unsound.

With thanks to A.T. Studio.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

A MIND-BOGGLING MIX OF SCIENCE AND SORCERY

The Guardian

What does it mean to write your own life-story? For twenty-five years, Wayne McGregor has been making choreography that interrogates life through the experience of the body, moving intelligently in space and time. His practice has been far-reaching and sought out collaborators from a diverse range of artistic and scientific fields to investigate the nature of embodied cognition.

Now McGregor turns his attention to the body as archive, as he embarks on a cycle of choreographic portraits illuminated by the sequencing of his own genome. The first of these studies, Autobiography, is an abstract meditation on aspects of self, life, writing, refracting both remembered pasts and speculative futures.

Palimpsesting McGregor’s choreographic imprint over personal memoir and genetic code in a continuous re-imagining, Autobiography unfolds uniquely for each and every performance. Life, writing itself anew.

Wayne McGregor’s artistic collaborators include composer and producer Jlin (music), visual artist Ben Cullen Williams (set design and projection), lighting designer Lucy Carter (lighting design), artist and designer Aitor Throup (costume design), writer and director Uzma Hameed (dramaturgy), and software architect Nick Rothwell (Autobiography algorithm).

MUSIC CREDITS

«ELEVATION»

Written & performed by Hildur Guðnadóttir

Published by Touch Music/Fairwood Music UK Ltd

«AGING»

Written and performed by Zelienople

Matt Christensen (guitar and vocals), Brian Harding (Bass clarinet and synth), and Mike Weis (Percussion)

CONCERTO GROSSO OP.6 NO1 IN D MAJOR (II. LARGO)

Written by Arcangelo Corelli

Performed by Ensemble 415, Chiara Banchini & Jesper Christensen

Courtesy of Harmonia Mundi / [PIAS]

«ATTACK / TRANSITION»

Written by: Carsten Nicolai, Ryuichi Sakamoto

© Edition Carsten Nicolai

With kind permission of Budde Music

UK, KAB America Inc & Sony/ATV

Music Publishing Limited

«SPACE 21 (PETRICHOR)»

Written and performed by Max Richter

Published by Mute Song Limited

Courtesy of Deutsche Gramophone GmbH

«GUANTANAMO» by Jlin.

Appears courtesy of Planet Mu Records.

Composed by Jerrilynn Patton

WAYNE McGREGOR CBE

Choreographer / Director

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 twentyfive 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.

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 and 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.

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.

Company Wayne McGregor

STUDIO WAYNE McGREGOR is the creative engine of McGregor’s lifelong 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.

STAFF

Artistic Director: Wayne McGregor

Executive Director: Rebecca Marshall

Associate Director: Odette Hughes

Director of Learning and Engagement: Jasmine Wilson

Finance and Operations Director: Marcel Jenkins

Administrative Director: Hazel Singleton

Re-stager / Rehearsal Director: Antoine Vereecken

Technical Director: Christopher Charles

Touring and Projects Manager: Lucy Glover

Studio Duty Manager: Kathryn Stephens-Berry

Communications and Content Manager: Grace Owen

Studio and Finance Manager: Sharminy Ragunathan

Development Manager: Leigh Mac Laughlin

Company Producer: Bethan Ecclestone

Research Associate: Philip Barnard

Board of Directors: Delia Barker (Chair), Anupam Ganguli, Uzma Hameed, Peter Kenyon, Aleks Krotoski, Dominique Laffy, Caroline Miller