Driven by an insatiable curiosity about movement and its creative potential, choreographer explores the creativity of dance through collaborations with science and technology. “I understand through the work that we’re doing how we might be able to use science to do something really interesting creatively,鈥 he says.
For example, in the latest iteration of Autobiography, a personal choreography that weaves memoirs with data from McGregor鈥檚 own DNA, an artificial intelligence tool is trained on hundreds of hours of his choreographic archive and asked to develop new movements for the dancers to perform.
AI is also explored in A Body for Harnasie, a reimagining of the ballet score Harnasie by Karol Szymanowski, based on a Polish folk story. In it, recorded footage of McGregor’s dancers is blended with algorithmic manipulation to 鈥渂ring an abstract nuance鈥 to the film, says Cullen Williams, the artist collaborating on the project. This footage is then projected onto a kinetic sculpture, which rotates and changes shape amid the orchestra performing Szymanowski鈥檚 ballet score, under conductor Edward Gardner.
And in UniVerse, a narrative-led piece most recently performed at , McGregor uses dance to communicate a nuanced experience of the dangers of climate change and the potential to find solutions through science, technology and human ingenuity.
