Wayne McGregor: Infinite Bodies

I am staring at a machine that resembles a torture device from the future. A dozen spindly and black robot arms, each with a bright yellow light on its tip, are attached to two parallel black tracks. Suddenly, the machine starts zooming towards me, its arms squirming like a creepy spider. 

It sounds like something out of Blade Runner, but the contraption is actually a kinetic robot sculpture, made as a collaboration between Wayne McGregor and art collective Random International. Separately, in a video, I see two dancers eloquently interacting with the apparatus. Simply put, the work explores the relationship between humans and machines, and you can see it for yourself now at Somerset House’s landmark dance exhibition. 

Wayne McGregor: Infinite Bodies takes a look at the work of virtuoso choreographer Wayne McGregor – resident choreographer of The Royal Ballet, and the brains behind the ABBA Voyage avatar’s dance moves. Ever since the ’90s, when he created his first choreographic work inspired by robots (Cyborg, 1995), McGregor has been obsessed with the relationship between the body and technology. Over the years, he’s worked with cognitive neuroscientists at Cambridge, developed an AI choreography tool, and put a sci-fi ballet on the Royal Opera House stage. Now, an impressive display of his lofty work has been put on in London for all to see. 

It’s a sensory delight; you can feel soundscapes vibrating in your body

Walking through the dark space, visitors are taken through a series of immersive (but not in a tacky way) and beguiling installations, moving sculptures, interactive machines and large projections. A vast array of technology is incorporated, from machine learning and AI to motion capture, digital imaging and robotics. 

Spatially, the exhibition is impeccably laid out. Reflective floors throughout the space create beautiful mirrors for the videos and lights on show. It’s also a sensory delight; you can feel soundscapes vibrating in your body, or interact with the aforementioned AI tool – created in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture –to generate your own McGregor-style choreography. Later, a sinister black box invites you to step inside, at which point you are confronted with an infinite reflection of yourself, while a high pitched ringing sound bounces around the space. I imagine it feels similar to being sucked into a black hole, and it sent a genuine shiver down my spine. 

And there’s more. On my visit there were two live dancers performing a sombre duet, their movement mirrored in a column of thousands of hanging LEDs, creating a ‘living sculpture’ that reacts to the dancers. The whole exhibition culminates with a giant projection of McGregor’s dancers cast onto a vast kinetic metal sculpture, made up of two rotating panels that at one point look a bit like the International Space Station. 

Occasionally Infinite Bodies veers dangerously towards being pretentious and self-congratulatory. I didn’t care for many of the hyperbolic and word salad-y wall texts banging on about things like ‘kinaesthetic empathy’ and ‘sonic dreamscapes’: they might be fascinating for dance or technology scholars, but they’re surely gobbledegook to everyone else. But ultimately, the work speaks for itself. And whether you ‘get it’ or not, virtually every work on show at Infinite Bodies is worth stopping at and lingering over for a while.