Word: mcgregor
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...McGregor's dance background was multifaceted. Growing up in the north of England, he was a fan of John Travolta films, and took classes in disco and ballroom. At 15, he shifted to contemporary dance, studying in Leeds and New York City. Tall but fast, and endowed with a bonelessly flexible physique, he was a performer you didn't forget, and when he founded Random at the age of 22, he passed on his distinctive style to his dancers...
Entity is the third panel in a triptych of pieces examining the relationship between the brain and the creative processes involved in dance. In 2002, McGregor's fascination with this topic led him to set up a research project entitled Choreography and Cognition with a team of five neuroscientists; the project was backed by a fellowship at the Department of Experimental Psychology at Cambridge University. The first product of this research was AtaXia (2004), named after the disabling physical condition. Partly inspired by a real ataxia sufferer, the piece examined the frailty of the brain-body connection. By forcing breakdowns...
...which followed in 2005, was a meditation on the function and symbolism of the heart, performed to a choral score by British composer Sir John Tavener, himself suffering from degenerative heart disease. McGregor and the Random dancers had their own hearts scanned and he even sat in on open-heart surgery. "I fainted," he admits ruefully...
...other words, that could "think" for itself and provide choreographers with new options for physical expression. It's an "out-on-the-horizon" notion, admits DeLahunta, who studies the intersection between art and science at the Amsterdam School of the Arts. But it's a technological dream that McGregor is energetically chasing. "We've got people working on software who understand the algorithms and engineering of artificial intelligence," says DeLahunta. "We hope to have something ready...
...relationship between this theoretical work and the dance that comes out of it is not always direct, but each feeds the other. By immersing himself in research, McGregor says, he is able to walk into the studio, surrender to "the visceral thrill of moving," and create from instinct. Dance breaks down if it's overloaded with theory, but it's the physical rush of the choreography that you take away from a McGregor performance - the mesh of high-speed detail, the interplay between the lyrical and the neurotic, the steely calligraphy of the limbs. Few choreographers make more extreme physical...