Dyad 1909 Project

Image from the Dyad 1909 research project, University of California, San Diego, USA, 2009.

In January 2009, Wayne McGregor, in his role as innovator-in-residence at the University of California, San Diego, and Company Wayne McGregor continued their study of “creative cognition in choreography” with director of the Interactive Cognition Lab, David Kirsch. In an investigation into creative and distributed cognition, for 18 days, Kirsch and his students observed McGregor working with his dancers on material for Dyad 1909, observing and recording the process, while interviewing members of the company about the creative process. The data gathered shed light on the process by which a dance emerges from the distributed creativity of dancers and choreographer, working through language, gesture, memory and physical intelligence, and helped to inform the final choreography for Dyad 1909, performed by Company Wayne McGregor as part of the In the Spirit of Diaghilev season at Sadler's Wells, London, UK, 2009.