Deepstaria
Company Wayne McGregor (UK)
This performance includes flashing lights
Wayne McGregor’s choreographic masterwork takes its title from rarely seen species of deep-sea jellyfish. Deepstaria enigmatica makes its home in the crushing depths of the ocean, where it lives out its life in perpetual darkness.
Through movement phrases that recall the peristaltic motion of undersea creatures, the performers give expression to the existential experience of the void. In summoning ultimate dark, the work utilizes Vantablack Vision technology, an industrial material capable of absorbing 99.9% of light. The abyss at the centre of the work is balanced and matched by Oscar-winning sound designer Nicolas Becker and LEXX who implement Bronze AI, a digital audio engine that unfolds in fluid fashion in reaction to the performance itself.
McGregor’s wildly ranging and intellectually rigorous approach to choreography finds inspiration in science, technology, and the mysteries of the natural world. Working in dialogue with the environment, Deepstaria returns us to our place of origin in a remarkable convergence of concept and manifestation.
From aqueous womb to sepulchral tomb, we begin and end in darkness. But even in the deepest abyss, there is light, spiraling out in cosmic fashion, a luminescent splash against the expanse of ocean and sky. What emerges from the depths is nothing less than liberation in its most elemental form.
April 15-17, 2027 | 8pm
Vancouver Playhouse
600 Hamilton Street
Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes (no intermission)
7:15pm each night in the Upper Lobby
"Their figures evolve in front of us, lines melting into curves, convex convulsing into concave."
The Guardian
"Here, the human body, so frail and small, yet so strong, offered a message of resilience and hope."
New York Times
"Like the mysterious jellyfish itself, their bodies also shift and shimmer, conjuring a physicality that feels half-ghostly, half-astronomical."
A Young(ish) Perspective
Born in 1970, Sir Wayne McGregor is a multi award winning British choreographer and director, internationally renowned for trailblazing innovations in performance that have radically redefined dance in the modern era. Driven by an insatiable curiosity about movement and its creative potentials, his experiments have led him into collaborative dialogue with an array of artistic forms, scientific disciplines, and technological interventions. The startling and multi-dimensional works resulting from these interactions have ensured McGregor’s position at the cutting edge of contemporary arts for over twenty-five years.
In 1992 McGregor founded Random Dance (now Company Wayne McGregor), his ensemble of highly skilled dancers and laboratory for ambitious and experimental new choreography, revealing the movement possibilities of the body in ever more precise degrees of articulation. McGregor has made over thirty works for the company, which have and continue to tour across the UK and around the world. Company Wayne McGregor is Resident Company at Sadler’s Wells, London.
