Concept, Direction & Choreography: Wayne McGregor
Created in collaboration with the dancers: Rebecca Bassett-Graham, Jordan James Bridge, Travis Clausen-Knight, Louis McMiller, Daniela Neugebauer, Jacob O’Connell, James Pett, Fukiko Takase, Po-Lin Tung, Jessica Wright
Original Music: Jlin
Set & Projection Design: Ben Cullen Williams
Lighting Design: Lucy Carter
Costume Design: Altor Throup
Dramaturgy: Uzma Hameed

World Premiere: 4 October 2017, London — Sadler's Wells
Duration: 80 minutes without interval

Additional Credits
Software: Nick Rothwell
Animation: Tom Scott
Set Construction: Joseph Waller Fabrications
Photography & Film: Ben Cullen Williams
Music Partner: Unsound

Scientific Partners:
Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
EMBL European Bioinformatics Institute
Connecting Science – Wellcome Genome Campus Public Engagement
Wellcome Genome Campus Society of Ethics Research
University Medical Centre Utrecht

Special thanks to A.T. Studio.

Co-Producers
Studio Wayne McGregor
Sadler’s Wells, London
Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg
Edinburgh International Festival
Festspielhaus St. Pölten
Carolina Performing Arts at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Movimentos Festwochen der Autostadt in Wolfsburg
Co-Commissioned By
West Kowloon Cultural District Hong Kong
Festival Diaghilev P.S. St. Petersburg
Centro Cultural Vila Flor Guimarães
Seattle Theatre Group (music)
Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, London

Company Wayne McGregor is resident company at Sadler’s Wells, where Wayne McGregor is also Associate Artist.

“I’m not what I believe
to be. I have to go
inside me.”
— Olivier de Sagazan

“…our ability to read out
the sequence of our own
genome has the makings of a
philosophical paradox. Can an
intelligent being comprehend
the instructions to make itself?”
— The Common Thread, John Sulston & Georgina Ferry

Notes on the Performance

What does it mean to write one’s own story?
For twenty-five years, Wayne McGregor has created works that interrogate life through bodily experience, exploring how the body moves intelligently through space and time. His artistic research has brought together collaborators from a wide range of scientific and artistic disciplines in order to investigate the philosophy of the body itself.
With Autobiography, McGregor turns his attention to the body as archive, beginning a cycle of choreographic portraits inspired by the sequencing of his own genome. The first of these studies becomes an abstract meditation on his life, simultaneously refracting memories of the past while speculating on possible futures.
The choreographic imprint of McGregor’s work is continuously reimagined, meaning that Autobiography evolves with every performance.
Life rewriting itself anew.