Since 2003 Wayne McGregor has been collaborating with cognitive scientists to generate new understandings of creativity.
Whilst scientists have studied the visual arts, very little work has been done in the field of dance.
McGregor has been working with Dr Philip Barnard (MRC Cognition and Brain Unit at Cambridge) to understand, amongst other things, how to disrupt the messages in the brain to make someone discoordinated.
During this creative collaboration process he's learnt that before the body can move, the brain has to generate imagery. Dr Barnard has identified that we can build three types of imagery; verbal/auditory, visual or deep schemer (from instinct, emotion and experience).
Each of these are created through a different mental loop. McGregor is passionate about understanding the brain so he can unlock a new way to create dance:
"If you're always imagining in the same way, you're always moving in the same way."
He's applying this knowledge to generate unusal imagery and is creating beautiful and ground-breaking dance in the process.
His latest work is FAR.
