The man on the scene at the moment, as far as music choreography is concerned, is Wayne McGregor. I was invited to his studio in the old media centre for the London Olympic Games, and the space was mind blowing! His studio door was at the end of a large empty hallway, where only a cleaning robot existed. It was a bit like the film “2001 Odyssey” meets “28 Days Later”. At the end of this desolate corridor we entered a black metal door and inside we saw a big white box with natural daylight coming in from the ceiling, some industrial staircase and in the centre of this space was a two story wooden box taking up the centre space of the studio. The wooden box was the home of two dance studios and an other empty space. The walls were bare apart from a few digital displays with numbers hanging off the walls. These displays and numbers show Wayne McGregors own personal chromogenic code. As well as this there was a glass table, vertical strip lights and some chairs on a section of the floor that had dancers floor markings all over it. By entering this space I had skipped a few decades and entered an alternative future.
When I was introduced to Wayne it was obvious he was a man who worked with visual ideas. He showed great interest in what I wanted to achieve visually. The chromogenic art pieces were hard to make interesting in still images so I chose to go more with the architecture and the vertical strip lights. Wayne, himself a dancer, brought new poses and postures to the shoot, movements I have never seen before. Great guy to meet and work with. A true inspiration who is able to give a lot to a shoot. I have never seen one of Wayne;s performances or choreographed dance shows, but if he’s anything to go by, it’s bound to be a visual firework.
