Triple Bill
Royal Opera House
According to a tacitly shared, unwritten code of common professional practice, critics ought not to divulge their opinion before being published. Which is why I felt terribly guilty when, at the end of Wayne McGregor’s Infra, I gave my first impressions to a BBC interviewer. True, I did not say that much. Surprised by the camera, I waffled. The sole cogent thing I managed to utter was ‘visually stunning’. Which it was. McGregor is indeed an intriguing figure of modern-day dance-making. Unlike some of his contemporaries, who are mainly preoccupied with challenging the ballet idiom, he prefers to focus on how the five-century-old art can effectively interact with technological ideas that are not normally associated with it. Instead of challenging the tenets of a well-affirmed vocabulary, McGregor uses those same tenets to explore the extent they can be worked on to suit the almost sci-fi environments which characterise his work.

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