Assemble a set of gifted young dancers from disparate national locations - all with varying styles of physical movement - and sparks are bound to fly. This was the case one April evening at the Lowry, Manchester’s dockside theatre settled on the edge of Salford Quays. The National Youth Dance Company (NYDC) had arrived to present the world premiere of Novacene, a contemporary ballet performance choreographed by Wayne McGregor CBE. Set against a stark white stage, bodies slid and sprung across the expanse, their soft and sharp movements animated by the white garments that encased them. As the piece progressed, a pocket of blue or cluster of red would bleed into the performance, conspiring at certain choreographic peaks to form striking prisms of colour, then disseminating as swiftly as they arrived. The group’s costuming was born of a cohesive aesthetic, but each dancer was styled contrastingly, a recognition of individual personas who gather to make a whole.
As the current guest artistic director of the NYDC, McGregor approached British-Jamaican designer Grace Wales Bonner this year to, the flagship performance of the troupe’s 10th anniversary celebrations. Inspired by the James Lovelock book of the same name, McGregor’s choreography takes cues from an imagined future where artificial intelligence has superseded human thought in both scope and capability. The clothes that the label created for the performance - white cotton track jackets over ribbed vests, wide shorts and heavy cotton joggers - exemplify Bonner’s subtle codes of cool and functionality, while folding in her wider interests in research, cultural critique and journalism. A narrow palette of white, red and blue acknowledges our country’s heritage, while flashes of silver taken from the label’s adidas collection nod to cyborgian themes.
