Wayne Mcgregor

Wayne McGregor is a British choreographer born in Stockport in 1970 who has built a distinctive experimental practice across contemporary dance, ballet, science and technology. He studied choreography and semiology at Bretton Hall in West Yorkshire and continued training at the José Limón School in New York, where he learned to treat composition, meaning-making and movement research as central to technique rather than peripheral to it.

In 1992 McGregor founded Random Dance, the ensemble now known as Company Wayne McGregor. The company became the performance arm of a wider laboratory in which dancers work with artists, designers, composers, scientists and technologists. Based at Sadler's Wells, Studio Wayne McGregor tests the body's movement possibilities through increasingly precise articulation and collaboration across disciplines.

McGregor's practice soon moved between independent contemporary dance and large classical institutions. His 2006 ballet *Chroma*, made for The Royal Ballet to music by Joby Talbot and arrangements of songs by The White Stripes, won the Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production. In the same year, The Royal Ballet appointed him Resident Choreographer—the first choreographer from a contemporary-dance background invited into that role. During the following decade he continued making works for both Company Wayne McGregor and ballet companies. *Entity* (2008), *FAR* (2010), *Atomos* (2013) and *Autobiography* (2017) extended his interest in cognition, digital systems, visual environments and collaboration. At The Royal Ballet, *Infra* (2008), *Raven Girl* (2013) and the full-length *Woolf Works* (2015) demonstrated that the same choreographic inquiry could reconfigure classical technique and support large narrative or literary structures.

His work also crossed into opera, theatre, film and music video. He served as movement director for *Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire* and has collaborated across opera houses, theatres and film productions, with music-video work including Radiohead and The Chemical Brothers. McGregor holds the post of Professor of Choreography at Trinity Laban and served as Director of Dance for La Biennale di Venezia following his 2021 appointment. His honours include a CBE for services to dance in 2011, the Prix de Lausanne Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021, and a knighthood announced in the 2024 Birthday Honours. He received the Olivier Award for Outstanding Contribution to Dance in 2026.