Beyond Steps: Comparing McGregor and Balanchine’s Choreographic Worlds

What does being a choreographer entail? Does choreography need to be able to stand on its own to be considered good?

These questions arose as I took my seat in Sadler’s Wells for the UK premiere of Wayne McGregor’s new work Deepstaria. McGregor is the award-winning Resident Choreographer of the Royal Ballet, known for his inventive and immersive pieces. I was excited to see more of McGregor’s work, being relatively unfamiliar with his style, but this performance left me confused and a little bored about what I had just spent an hour and a half watching.

So what makes a good choreographer? Why is McGregor praised for his choreography that I was bored by?

Company Wayne McGregor performing Deepstaria. Photograph by Ravi Deepres

To understand his success, it is important to understand the structure of the creative team behind a ballet, specifically a contemporary ballet. Compared to theatre, a choreographer in some ways acts as both the playwright and director of a show, conceiving the steps, movement and narrative, but also thinking about how the piece will be presented, how the steps link with music, lights, sets and costumes. The lack of distinction in dance between the steps and the way they are presented makes the role of ‘choreographer’ much broader than I had previously imagined.

Deepstaria explored the concept of the void through different mediums. Using Vantablack pigment on the backdrop, it looked as though the dancers were in complete darkness, surrounded by nothing. Lighting bathed the dancers in eerie washes of colour and sudden bursts of light, enhancing the sense of disorientation. The dancers appeared in jellyfish-like costumes, reflecting the piece’s name. McGregor uses all of these elements, as well as the choreography, to explore a concept, making his role of ‘choreographer’ much more varied than just coming up with the steps the dancers execute. But not every choreographer sees the role in this way.

Take, for example, the ballets The Four Temperaments or Agon by George Balanchine. Balanchine strongly believed in dance for the sake of it, creating many plotless ballets performed in the dancers’ plain rehearsal clothing, now referred to as his ‘black and white ballets’ for the colour of the leotards and tights. What stands out in Balanchine’s work is how precisely his choreography animates the music, something he often achieves by assigning different instrument groups to specific dancers. To him, it was crucial that the dance and music stand on their own, and that other elements of production, such as lighting, sets and costumes, were there only to complement the dancing, not adding or especially not distracting from it.

The School of American Ballet performing Agon. Photograph by Paul Kolnik

This was, for a long time, the view that I had about choreography and dance. Seeing Deepstaria made me question the accessibility of such choreography-focused pieces. While I, a classically trained ballet dancer who has been watching dance forever, can see and (mostly) understand the complexities of the choreography, many may not, especially those new to dance. In other words, do ballets that prioritise pure choreography risk alienating newer audiences? And does incorporating design and narrative dilute — or democratise — the form?

I would argue that works like McGregor’s Deepstaria are more of an intellectualisation of dance: the overcomplication of the production felt more confusing than anything. At least Balanchine was open about the fact that his ballets are plotless, and did not claim to explore some obscure theme that leaves the audience struggling to find meaning in the steps. I think that a ballet novice watching The Four Temperaments will leave having liked the piece or not, possibly not understanding the appeal but at least understanding the premise of the show, whereas the same audience member leaving Deepstaria will be overall confused by what they have watched and not sure how to feel about it.

To answer the question on McGregor’s success, my interpretation is that McGregor is a fantastic ‘director’, capable of bringing together many elements of production cohesively, but a weaker ‘playwright’, where his choreography occasionally feels repetitive and lacking in direction. Of course, part of this is personal taste, as I don’t naturally respond to McGregor’s style of movement. But structurally, I found the choreography lacking in variation and structure.

While visual and conceptual elements can deepen a dance work, they shouldn’t obscure its core: the choreography. If the movement doesn’t speak, no amount of design can save it. The lack of distinction between ‘director’ and ‘playwright’ in dance leads to very different interpretations of what it means to choreograph a piece for an audience. I don’t think there is a wrong approach, but I do think that the choreography itself is a key element of a show and should not be put aside in favour of other production elements.