Between defining the last decade of dance in London and choreographing celluloid scenes for Harry Potter and Radiohead, Wayne McGregor has made time to come to Vancouver.
And, to borrow from our British cousins, it's terribly exciting. Not simply because he's one of the dance world's biggest stars, but because he demands so incredibly much of his dancers.
WE Vancouver caught up with Odette Hughes, associate director of Wayne McGregor | Random Dance, by phone in Leeds as she headed home for the day.
Hughes is the woman responsible for rehearsing the dancers through McGregor's anatomy-defying routines. And if anyone knows his groundbreaking cognitive approach first hand, it's Hughes, who has danced for and worked with McGregor for nearly 20 years.
"Wayne's very known for pushing the body to very extreme places," she says. "That's very much a signature in his works. He's so amazed and so interested by the human body that he really just wants to push it to see how much can it bend, how high can the legs go up, how quick can you move, how slow you can move."
It takes immense technical training for dancers to perform McGregor's alien movements, which force the body into physically discordant poses.
"They're incredibly powerful, incredibly strong," says Hughes, "and they have to have that basis of pure technique, really and truly, before it's safe enough to be pushed off it."
DanceHouse presented Random Dance in Vancouver for the first time in 2012 with the pattern-happy Entity. In contrast, FAR is an earthy, grounded homage to the Age of Enlightenment – a time when the mysteries of the human body were just beginning to be dissected and discovered by scientists.
And if the idea anatomical exploration makes you uncomfortable, composer Ben Frost's collaborative score, built on static and animal noises and backlit by an imposingly stark light board, will offer no relief.
"There's a point in the sound, maybe 25 minutes in. It's not loud but it's quite uncomfortable," says Hughes of the moment that leaves her most breathless. "And there's another one that comes in. Then another one, and then there's a last one which literally lasts about three seconds, and you're thinking, 'Ahhh! Stop!'"
And then it stops, abruptly releasing its auditory fist, the sound and sights giving way to serenity.
"I've seen FAR 150, if not 200 times, now," she gushes, "and every time I hear it and see it performed, at that point I always [give a] big sigh of relief. I just love that moment. That moment of being right on the edge of my seat still, and then everything changes."
DanceHouse presents FAR by Wayne McGregor | Random Dance on Friday and Saturday (Sept. 26 and 27) at the Vancouver Playhouse.
