The Joyce Presents Company Wayne McGregor

The Joyce Theater Foundation, Inc. (Linda Shelton, Executive Director) is thrilled to present British choreographer and director Wayne McGregor's renowned ensemble of world class dancers, Company Wayne McGregor, in its Joyce debut from February 27 - March 3, with the U.S. premiere of his acclaimed evening length work Autobiography. Tickets, ranging in price from $10-$46, can be purchased at www.Joyce.org, or by calling JoyceCharge at (212) 242-0800. Please note: ticket prices are subject to change. The Joyce Theater is located at 175 Eighth Avenue at West 19th Street. For more information, please visit www.Joyce.org.

As previously announced, The Joyce Theater will offer a Pay What You Decide (PWYD) option during three of its presentations this season. The performance of Company Wayne McGregor's Autobio graphy on Saturday, March 3 at 2pm will be the first of three opportunities to participate in this initiative which invites audiences to see world-class artists without the usual upfront financial risk. For more information, please visit www.Joyce.org/pwyd.

What does it mean to write your own life-story? For 25 years, Wayne McGregor has been making choreography that interrogates life through the experience of the body, moving intelligently in space and time. His practice has been far-reaching, and has sought out collaborators from a diverse range of artistic and scientific fields to investigate the nature of embodied cognition. Now, McGregor turns his attention to the body as an archive, as he embarks on a cycle of choreographic portraits illuminated by the sequencing of his own genome. The first of these studies, Autobiography, is an abstract meditation on aspects of self, life, and writing, refracting both remembered pasts and speculative futures. Palimpsesting McGregor's choreographic imprint over personal memoir and genetic code in a continuous re-imagining, Autobiography unfolds uniquely for each and every performance. Life, writing itself anew. The work made its world premiere at Sadler's Wells this past October where critics and audiences alike were swept away. Featuring 10 dancers, Autobiography includes stunning sets and projections by artist Ben Cullen Williams, lighting by award-winning designer Lucy Carter, costumes by artist and designer Aitor Throup, dramaturgy by writer Uzma Hameed, and is set to an original electronic score by critically acclaimed producer Jlin.

ABOUT Wayne McGregor

Born in 1970, Wayne McGregor CBE 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, McGregor's 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 two decades.
In 1992, McGregor founded Random Dance, which has grown into Studio Wayne McGregor to encompass his extensive creative output in fields both beyond and in dialogue with dance. Company Wayne McGregor, his ensemble of highly skilled dancers, was the original instrument through which McGregor evolved his distinctive visual style, revealing the movement possibilities of the body in ever more precise degrees of articulation. McGregor has made over 30 works for the company and today, it continues to be his laboratory for ambitious and experimental new choreography, touring his work across the UK and around the world. Company Wayne McGregor is a Resident Company at Sadler's Wells, London.

Since 2006, McGregor has been Resident Choreographer at The Royal Ballet, the first choreographer from a contemporary dance background to be invited into the role. His productions are acclaimed for their daring reconfiguring of classical language. McGregor has made 15 works for The Royal Ballet, from the iconic Chroma (2006) set to music by The White Stripes/Joby Talbot, to Woolf Works (2015) based on the life and writings of Virginia Woolf, both of which were awarded the prestigious Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production.

McGregor is regularly commissioned to make new work by the most important ballet companies in the world. His work has also been re-staged and performed by more than two dozen companies. He is in demand as a choreographer for theatre, opera, film (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Warner Brothers' Tarzan), music videos (Radiohead, The Chemical Brothers), fashion shows (Gareth Pugh at New York Fashion Week 2014), and TV (Brit Awards opening performance 2016, Paloma Faith's Brit Awards performance 2015). Some of the long list of artists who have partnered with McGregor through more than 20 years of collaborative multi-disciplinary work include John Tavener, Audrey Niffenegger, Jamie xx, Max Richter, Olafur Eliasson, Lucy Carter, Ben Frost, Thom Yorke, Mark Wallinger, Random International, Jon Hopkins, John Pawson, and Mark-Anthony Turnage.

Wayne McGregor is Professor of Choreography at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and has an Honorary Doctor of Science from Plymouth University, and an Honorary Doctor of Letters from University of Leeds. He is part of the Circle of Cultural Fellows at King's College London. He is Vice President of the Roundhouse, a Trustee of Aerowaves, and Patron of The Place and the Lisa Ullman Travel Scholarship. He was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the British Science Association in 2017 and is a member of the jury for the 2018 Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) International Prize.

McGregor's work has earned him a multitude of awards including three Critics' Circle Awards, two Time Out Awards, two South Bank Show Awards, two Olivier Awards, a prix Benois de la Danse, and a Critics' Prize at the Golden Mask Awards. In 2011 McGregor was awarded a CBE for Services to Dance.

ABOUT THE Joyce Theater Foundation

The Joyce Theater Foundation ("The Joyce," Executive Director, Linda Shelton), a non-profit organization, has proudly served the dance community for over three decades. Under the direction of founders Cora Cahan and Eliot Feld, Ballet Tech Foundation acquired and The Joyce renovated the Elgin Theater in Chelsea. Opening as The Joyce Theater in 1982, it was named in honor of Joyce Mertz, beloved daughter of LuEsther T. Mertz. It was LuEsther's clear, undaunted vision and abundant generosity that made it imaginable and ultimately possible to build the theater. Ownership was secured by The Joyce in 2015. The theater is one of the only theaters built by dancers for dance and has provided an intimate and elegant home for over 400 U.S.-based and international companies. The Joyce has also presented dance at Lincoln Center since 2012, and launched Joyce Unleashed in 2014 to feature emerging and experimental artists. To further support the creation of new work, The Joyce maintains longstanding commissioning and residency programs. Local students and teachers (K-12th grade) benefit from its school program, and family and adult audiences get closer to dance with access to artists. The Joyce's annual season of about 48 weeks of dance now includes over 340 performances for audiences in excess of 150,000.

Performances of Company Wayne McGregor U.S. premiere of Autobiography will be February 27-March 3 at The Joyce Theater (175 Eighth Avenue at West 19th Street) according to the following schedule: Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30pm; Thursday and Friday at 8pm; and Saturday at 2 and 8pm. There will be a post-performance Curtain Chat with Company Wayne McGregor onWednesday, February 28, which is open to all patrons attending that evening's performance. There will be a Pay What You Decide performance on Saturday, March 3 at 2pm. For more information about this option of seeing a performance before choosing what you want to pay, please visit www.Joyce.org/pwyd. Tickets range in price from $10-$46 and can be purchased at www.Joyce.org, or by calling JoyceCharge at (212) 242-0800. Please note: ticket prices are subject to change. The Joyce Theater is located at 175 Eighth Avenue at West 19th Street. For more information, please visit www.Joyce.org.