Exploring your physical potential

Studio Wayne McGregor runs a progressive Learning and Engagement programme, ensuring dance is made accessible for all.

These schemes include choreography lessons for school children, pre-vocational training for gifted young dancers, technique-based workshops for accomplished professionals, mobility skills sessions for those with additional needs, community-building efforts in troubled locations, social dances for elder participants, and large-scale public performances both in the UK and abroad.     

From the outset, McGregor and Wilson’s intention has been to empower everybody to get better acquainted with their own body and how it can move, while connecting with their innate creativity. They aim to share the tenets of choreographic thinking, rather than impart set movements constricted by rules or traditions.       

The Boys Project at The Place was one of McGregor’s earliest Learning and Engagement initiatives. In 1994, the resultant White Out! featured his company’s dancers performing alongside 60 amateur boys and young men from the local community as well as The Place’s Youth! company. A few years later, the project yielded Telenoia, a site-specific work in Canary Wharf.    

In 2000, as Artistic Director of National Youth Dance Wales, McGregor presented a seminar on computer imagery, animation and video projection. Two years later, he and Wilson returned to Wales, equipped with Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) telephone lines and projectors so that performers could simultaneously dance Game of Halves via video conferencing.     

That same year, an abstract dance piece for 8-12 year olds was crafted, called digit01. Participants interacted with virtual and video-generated images as a means of getting to grips with the concept of the internet. It debuted in Wolverhampton, before touring nationally in schools.     

TEN@Random was a forward-thinking, three year-long educational scheme produced by Wilson and McGregor, which brought quality dance experiences into ten London secondary schools per term. Once again, animation software Poser was used by students as a stimulus for imaginative physical expression.    

We encouraged participants to unlock their creative potential, rather than learn set choreography. We worked with 35 groups across London with different dance styles, to create individual sections that we then jigsawed together.— Jasmine Wilson   

Company Wayne McGregor also travels around the world to conduct workshops for those who lack access to formal dance education. In recent years, they’ve visited Lamu in Kenya and Sinthian and Tambacounda in Senegal, as well as completing a lengthy, multi-city tour of India.    

In partnership with the British Council, McGregor develops Mix The Body (2017) – a mobile phone application that allows users to make their own choreography. 

As part of the Danish city of Aarhus’ turn as European Capital of Culture, Company Wayne McGregor undertook a summer residency that saw them work with 100 intergenerational residents with no prior dance experience to make a public dance piece.