Wayne McGregor review: A stunning shimmering dance with no live dancer in sight | Wayne McGregor

WAine McGregor wants to teach us physical intelligence. He wants us to feel our bodies in space, to use them to understand the world, each other, and the digital world. It’s a lofty vision that the 55-year-old choreographer has long been realizing through the creation of dance works, but also through collaboration in academic research, working with new technology, and in fashion, film and music such as the hit show ABBA Voyage.

MacGregor is an artist, but he is also an entrepreneur, a man who makes things happen, and it is great to see a major exhibition dedicated to the choreographer as part of Somerset House’s 25th anniversary as an arts venue. This is not retroactive though. You won’t be guided through McGregor’s three decades of work and you’re unlikely to see a live dancer (company members will be in residence at times). Instead, there are a series of installations by McGregor’s collaborators from the fields of technology and design, some of which require the visitor’s body to operate.

One such feature is the Artificial Intelligent Motion Archive AISoma, developed in collaboration with Google, where you can record an eight-second dance visualized by a slightly clunky stick figure, from which the AI ​​will extrapolate the new movement. It’s a fleeting pleasure, even if the outcome seems somewhat random. The idea is to stimulate the creative process of a dancer stuck in inspiration. Is it better than Throw the Dice by Merce Cunningham? Well, it sure is a lot more expensive. But is this what Cunningham would do if he were alive today? maybe. As a visitor, I favored Random International’s Future Self: 10,000 LED lights hung in a column that light up in response to your movement to form a shimmering shadow, as if your ghost were trapped inside. It’s a poetic effect: We are starlight.

Is there enough here, enough wow moments, to rock our world (or really delve into McGregor’s art)? Sometimes the idea and process are richer than the output – and you can see McGregor’s meticulously written notebooks for a behind-the-scenes glimpse. There’s also a room of motion-sensitive mirrors, like a clan of miniature photographers turning their gazes at you, a 2003 film by director Olivier Megaton featuring a young McGregor who looks like David Cronenberg meets Daft Punk, as well as McGregor’s own forays into visual art-making in 3D-printed sculpture – a crouched figure (from his distant piece) peered through the frame of another installation, are highlights.

To see what all of McGregor’s imaginings lead up to, in terms of creating the choreography, you’ll need to visit On the Other Earth, the UK premiere of a cutting-edge 360-degree immersive film, viewed using 3D glasses inside a black cylindrical screen (a 15-minute walk from the gallery, on a separate ticket). Spending an hour in the dark will certainly make you more aware of your body sensations (the creaks), but the effects are undeniably impressive, whether it’s digital manipulation or just life-sized objects so close up that you can really see the details. In the theatre, MacGregor’s dancers, barely dressed as humans at their best, can seem like completely polished machines, “bodies” rather than people, and this close-up is a corrective to that.

Without the vision of “On Other Earth,” the exhibition alone may seem somewhat abstract. It’s wonderful in both senses: “Oh, this is wonderful,” and also the emotional distance, despite our physical presence — that’s the irony of the work. But Infinite Bodies is full of questions and truly innovative; Creative work full of bold ideas.