Wayne McGregor has built his career on rich, cross-disciplinary collaboration. He was appointed resident choreographer at The Royal Ballet in 2006, the first to hold the post who comes from a contemporary dance background. Since then, his projects have consistently challenged the limits of dance and live performance, weaving in visual elements from artists such as Carmen Herrera, Tacita Dean and Edmund de Waal.

McGregor has also found innovative ways of bringing literature to life through dance, in 2015 famously premiering his acclaimed show Woolf Works at The Royal Opera House, inspired by Virginia Woolf’s novels, letters, essays and diaries.

He is also drawn to the vast potential of contemporary technology, often highlighting its potential for expressing and understanding human emotion. Since 2021, he has served as curator for Biennale Danza, International Festival of Contemporary Dance in Venice. This year’s sci-fi ballet MaddAddam also received critical acclaim. It brought together the dystopian narrative of Margaret Atwood’s trilogy of the same name, with Max Richter’s chilling musical score.

Here, McGregor shares his highlights of the year and discusses his hopes for 2025.

Wayne McGregor’s ‘Maddaddam’, The National Ballet of Canada . Photo: © Karolina Kuras

What moment or project stands out as a personal highlight of 2024?

Shiro Takatani’s Tangent at Venice Biennale Danza 2024. I became a fan of Takatani [co-founder of the artistic collective Dumb Type) in the 1990s, drawn to his extreme experimentation in a range of cross-disciplinary fields. Tangent—essentially an ‘object play’—draws from art, science, and technology to magically illustrate the tangent line that exists between the extraordinary and the ordinary. It was a work of astonishing grace, simplicity and beauty. The rewards of Tangent far outweigh the demands on the audience for focus, patience, and stillness.

What was the best show you saw in your local city in 2024? 

Robert Icke’s Oedipus at the Wyndham’s Theatre was as revelatory as it was powerful. Transformed into a modern-day political thriller, this ancient Greek drama was reinvigorated with gripping intimacy and detailed performances. Lesley Manville’s unravelling Jocasta was devastating, and Hildegard Bechtler’s ravishingly minimal one-room set shifted our gaze quite literally (the set moves infinitesimally throughout) to target the final bloodletting.

Tell us about the best show you saw abroad in 2024.

“Peter Hujar: Rialto” at the Ukrainian Museum in New York. Spending quiet time with the rarely seen photos by Hujar, a leading figure of Manhattan’s counter-culture scene of the 1970s and 80s, who was famed for captivating portraits of burgeoning musicians, writers, actors, artists and drag queens. Here, we experience his early portraits, landscapes, and social documents, which often unmask the raw emotions of the everyday. I was most struck by his “Capuchin Catacombs” series, where the exposed corpses in the catacombs create a macabre spectacle with strange and haunting images of the passing of time.

Skin of Skunk Anansie Performing at Glastonbury Festival, 1999. (Photo by Rune Hellestad/Corbis/Getty Images)

What are you looking forward to most in 2025? 

When the V&A East opens in 2025, its inaugural exhibition is set to be a landmark immersive one: “The Music Is Black: A British Story”. Celebrating 125 years of Black music in Britain, from Jazz and Reggae to Jungle, Drum and Bass, and Drill, this milestone collection will reveal the extraordinary contribution Black British music has made to British culture and around the world over the years. Added bonus: I can’t wait to see inside the new V&A East Storehouse: 250,000 objects, 350,000 books, 1,000 archives on view and right next door to my Here East studio.

If you could see one change in the art world next year, what would it be?

Education; arts in school. The decimation of arts education in schools is a shameful national tragedy. Take dance education as a health indicator of the whole arts in schools trend. There has been a dramatic reduction in the number of young people accessing dance qualifications in school since 2010: a 48% decline in GCSE Dance entries and a 56% decline in A Level Dance entries.

Data shows that this is due to a lack of availability and choice rather than a lack of desire. A massive 84% of schools no longer offer GCSE Dance. We know the vital importance of creative and cultural knowledge as an essential part of our holistic education. We have to fight harder.

If you could go back in time, what is one piece of advice you would give yourself at this time last year?

Borrowing a thought from one of my favourite writers, the Lebanese author Amin Maalouf. He describes time travel as “a pattern drawn on tightly stretched parchment. Touch just one part of it, just one allegiance, and the whole person will react; the whole drum will sound” (from In the Name of Identity). If we could go back in time and change any small part of the pattern, we would alter the drum entirely. Our identity would have a completely different sound. My advice, listen to your music.

Name one individual art professional you have your eye on for 2025, and why?  

Nubya Garcia, a tenor saxophonist, is among the leading names to emerge from the past decade’s surge of young jazz talent in London. Hers is an audacious, collaborative and sensational talent, and she is never afraid to think big! Having just dropped her second solo album, Odyssey, a stunning cross-pollination of jazz and orchestral forces, Garcia is honing her compositional and arranging skills for whatever creative adventures lie next. Her restless inquisitiveness and natural musical bravura are groundbreaking. Her Odyssey gig at Factory International Manchester on 1 March 2025 is a must.