The 24th Macau Festival of the Arts program included two innovative modern dance performances under the direction of Wayne McGregor/ Random Dance. The dance program FAR is co-produced by Sadler’s Wells London UK, and by Peak Performance @ Montclair State University Montclair USA.
In 1992 Random Dance was founded, and thus began the journey that would take British dance director Wayne McGregor to international acclaim as an innovative modern dance choreographer. Just 10 years later in 2002, Wayne McGregor / Random Dance were invited to become a Resident Company at the prestigious Sadler’s Wells Company in the UK. This firmly recognised them as one of the UK’s most important and exciting contemporary dance companies.
On June 1st here in Macau at the Cultural Centre for 60 thrill-packed minutes, the performance FAR took us on an incredible journey of physically intense movement, dramatic lighting and very varied musical sounds. Directed and conceived by Wayne, the work is a collaboration of the 10 young international dancers working closely with Wayne on the choreography. The result is a demanding, expressive performance that was sometimes disturbing but always powerful and intense.
The eclectic mix of music was interesting, sometimes sounding like wild animals feeding, other times soft vocals or modern jazz. Whether as solo dancers, groups or the whole company, the dancer’s translation of the music was spell binding. In one particular piece, two male dancers looked so like birds preening and strutting around, the audience had to suppress their laughter. At another time, even the dancers’ shadows on a black side panel were captivating, as one dancer became two, and two became four and so on.
The current members of the dance ensemble come from many countries including Portugal, the UK, South Africa, New Zealand, Switzerland, Poland, Italy, Jamaica, and Japan. Between them they have a wealth of different dance experience which they bring to the collaborative performance which is FAR. Associate Director Odette Hughes has been with Wayne McGregor / Random Dance since 1997, and has assisted with several projects for The San Francisco Ballet, The Paris Ballet, The Bolshoi Ballet, and The National Ballet of Canada restaging McGregor ballet for these companies.
For Wayne McGregor / Random Dance, striving to deliver new and exciting dance to the public has led to projects as diverse as the 2012 Big Dance in Trafalgar Square involving 1,000 dancers from 30 groups across London, and bi-directional performances whereby two companies perform simultaneously in different parts of the world. Wayne has been invited to created new works for many dance companies around the globe, and worked on several film, TV and music projects.
Wayne was honored in 2011 with a CBE ( Commander of the Order of the British Empire ) for his services to dance. Wayne McGregor’s choreographic style has been described as ‘drastically fast and articulate’. Add to that ‘challenging’, ‘radical’, and ‘out reaching’, and you might just begin to describe his talent!
