Company Wayne McGregor bring Autobiography to YTR

Genetic code, AI and choreography merge in a work that re-imagines and remakes itself anew at every performance as Company Wayne McGregor / Autobiography (v102 and v103) comes to York Theatre Royal on October 25 and 26. 

Throughout his career, Wayne McGregor has made choreography that interrogates life through the experience of the body in its multifaceted relationship with technology.  

In 2017, McGregor turned his attention to the ‘body as archive’ with Autobiography (1.0), the first in a developing series of unique dance portraits inspired and determined by the sequencing of his own genetic code.  

Layering choreographic imprints over personal memoir and in dialogue with a specially created algorithm that hijacks McGregor’s DNA data, Autobiography upends the traditional nature of dance-making as artificial intelligence and instinct converge in creative authorship. 

In the latest iterations of the work, AISOMA – a new AI tool developed with Google Arts and Culture utilizing machine-learning trained on 100s of hours of McGregor’s choreographic archive – overwrites the configurations of its initial state to present fresh movement options to the performers, injecting unfamiliar and often startling content into the choreographic ecosystem. Life, writing itself anew.  

Company Wayne McGregor Dancers
2024-2025 Season 

• Rebecca Bassett-Graham 
• Naia Bautista 
• Kevin Beyer 
• Salvatore De Simone 
• Chia-Yu Hsu 
• Hannah Joseph 
• Jasiah Marshall 
• Jayla O’Connell 
• Salomé Pressac 
• Mariano Zamora Gonzaléz 

Concept and Direction 

Wayne McGregor 

Choreography 

Wayne McGregor in collaboration with the dancers 

Music 

Jlin 

Set Design and Projection 

Ben Cullen Williams 

Lighting Design 

Lucy Carter 

Costume Design 

Aitor Throup 

Dramaturgy 

Uzma Hameed 

Autobiography Algorithm 

Nick Rothwell 

Produced by Studio Wayne McGregor. 

Co-produced by Sadler’s Wells, London, UK; Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg; Edinburgh International Festival, UK; Festspielhaus St Pölten, Austria; Carolina Performing Arts at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA; Movimentos Festwochen der Autostadt in Wolfsburg, Germany. 

Co-commissioned by West Kowloon Cultural District, Hong Kong; Festival Diaghilev. P.S., St Petersburg, Russia; Centro Cultural Vila Flor, Guimarães, Portugal; Seattle Theatre Group, USA (music); Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, London, UK. 

Music by Jlin in partnership with Unsound. 

Company Wayne McGregor Autobiography is at York Theatre Royal, Fri 25 and Sat 26 October.

Find out more information and book your tickets here.