ON STAGE
What: Company Wayne McGregor: Atomos
Where: Royal Theatre, 805 Broughton St.
When: Friday, March 16, and Saturday, March 17, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $29-$95 at rmts.bc.ca, by phone at 250-386-6121, or in person at the Royal McPherson Playhouse
Dance pioneer Wayne McGregor is not a choreographer, in the strictest sense. According to a cast member of his current production, Atomos, he’s a creator above everything else.
“It’s hard to know where to start,” dancer Travis Clausen-Knight said with a laugh, when asked to address McGregor’s innovative way of working. McGregor is a master of several media, with little energy for art that does not expand the horizons of its audience, Clausen-Knight added.
“He’s taking technology, he’s taking science, and pushing them much further into dance. Dance is a very open field that allows for a lot of possibilities, and Wayne is interested in pushing that boundary more and more.”
Dance in the physical and virtual worlds is explored in Atomos, an innovative piece from Company Wayne McGregor, which has been at the forefront of the multi-disciplinary field for the better part of two decades.
McGregor, 48, is a U.K.-based legend whose shapeshifting approach to art has manifested itself in collaborations with musicians (Radiohead, Brian Eno, Yoko Ono) and designers (Idris Khan, Tauba Auerbach, Hildegard Bechtler). He is considered to have one foot in tradition and the other in radical reinvention.
He embraces new technology for Atomos, which premièred in 2013. The project took 15 weeks to create, and involves 10 dancers, including Clausen-Knight, who were given much leeway. “He was creating with us and we were creating with him — that’s the process he does,” Clausen-Knight said. “He has a lot of people he wants to involve with the work, to make the vision unique.”
A vital collaborator on Atomos was filmmaker and photographer Ravi Deepres, whose contributions came to life through the advent of 3-D technology. In what has become a trademark of Company Wayne McGregor — albeit one that qualifies as rare around these parts — the audience is required to wear 3-D glasses for parts of the performance. Deepres’s imagery will be shown on screens placed at strategic points on the stage, but the equipment is not used as a prop.
If anything, technology is a central character, Clausen-Knight said.
“The glasses usually have people a bit worried. I think they are expecting something jump out at you. But they are not big screens, and it’s not so much about what’s jumping out at you as the depth of field. The screens are meant to be an interaction with [the dancers]. They are involved in some of the sections; there’s relations all the time, to something on stage or off stage or around the stage.”
If the use of 3-D glasses and monitors sounds like a distraction to some, McGregor has done his job. His art exists to provoke and engage, not comfort, Clausen-Knight said. “He likes causing an interruption to the audience, because it means they have to choose what they are watching.”
Clausen-Knight, who was in Nanaimo on Wednesday preparing for an Atomos performance at the Port Theatre, was wary of attempting to define the production (“Wayne’s work is so multi-layered,” he said), but he was happy to talk at length about what McGregor was hoping to achieve.
To explore the idea of what makes a human, McGregor had the cast use Ridley Scott’s classic sci-fi film, Blade Runner, for reference. “That movie explores the very similar question of what it is to be human. Atomos breaks down those levels in a molecular, scientific way that also incorporates a smaller, emotional response as well,” Clausen-Knight said.
The computer program employed by McGregor on Atomos was nicknamed “the 11th dancer,” which indicates the degree to which it was used. During the early rehearsals, Clausen-Knight said, the screen would broadcast lines and shapes at one end of the studio, images that became more complex over time. The program was given instructions to respond to select bits of video, creating its own, computer-generated impulse response to what was initially being shown on screen. Call it artificial intelligence imitating human existence.
“It wouldn’t do it one way, it would generate over time, in several stages,” Clausen-Knight said, still sounding amazed by the experience. “It was much like how we create. We don’t always remember what we’re doing, and it keeps changing slightly — it’s never the same as it was the first time.”
The computer generated an entire sequence, based upon the information it received, which gave the dancers the impetus to respond during the creation of Atomos.
“By the end, I don’t want to say it evolved, but it literally became its own being,” Clausen-Knight said. “We associated with it, and felt a huge connection to it. It really responded to the things around it, much like a person would. That was quite strange, bearing in mind that the piece was exploring what is a human and what it means to be a person. This program was doing exactly that. It was creating its own, mind in a way.”
Members of the audience won’t meet the 11th dancer, but they will see the product of its digital brain. Several screens of 3D imagery will be shown while the dancers perform Friday and Saturday, adding another layer to McGregor’s universe. “I don’t fully understand all of them,” Clausen-Knight said of the images, which range from ants and algorithms to the periodic table of elements. “They are weirdly coded in their own way.”
Atomos is essentially based on the splitting of atoms, Clausen-Knight said, but here it is used as a metaphor for life. “It’s very literal, in a way. In the same way [atoms are split], we are breaking down these very small components of a person, small components of a conversation, or small components of skin or cells.”
Nerve-inducing, to say the least. “Wayne never wants us to be safe,” Clausen-Knight said, with a knowing laugh. “He never wants us to be in a normal state, and comfortable where we are. That would defeat the point of what he’s trying to do. He wants us to take risks.”
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