THIS IS LONDON SEPTEMBER EDITION 2025 copy - Flipbook - Page 22
Wayne McGregor: On The Other Earth Company Wayne McGregor 2025.
Photo: Ravi Deepres
WAYNE MCGREGOR: INFINITE
BODIES
This month, Somerset House is to
present Infinite Bodies, a landmark
exhibition by internationally acclaimed
choreographer and director Sir Wayne
McGregor CBE. Marking the culmination of
Somerset House’s 25th birthday
celebrations, it brings together a dynamic
constellation of collaborators across dance,
visual arts and sound, exploring bold new
expressions of the body across space,
time, and technology. A series of multisensory installations, performances and
experiments will take over Somerset
House’s Embankment Galleries, including
spectacular new commissions. Company
Wayne McGregor, McGregor’s world-class
company of dancers, will be in residence at
Somerset House periodically activating the
installations and facilitating interactions.
Presented offsite, in partnership with
Stone Nest in London’s West End,
McGregor unveils On The Other Earth,
a radical new installation to extend the
experience of Infinite Bodies beyond
Somerset House. As the world’s first
post-cinematic choreographic
installation, it refracts, evolves and
reimagines dance performance in a
startlingly original new form of
experience.
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It is set within Jeffrey Shaw and
Sarah Kenderdine’s radically immersive,
panoramic, 360-degree stereoscopic,
12k LED, 26-million-pixel nVis screen,
where 3D imagery is experienced within
an enveloping, large-scale cylindrical
architecture of eight metres wide and
four metres tall. Created in collaboration
with artists Ravi Deepres and Theresa
Baumgartner, and combining dance,
choreography, digital imaging,
spatialised sound, and AI, McGregor
once again redefines how we think about
movement, the body, and performance.
In On The Other Earth, visitors are
invited into the heart of the dance,
connecting in close contact with the
hyperreal dancers of Company Wayne
McGregor and the Hong Kong Ballet in a
physicalised sound environment designed
by In rible Mountain, the collective
comprised of Oscar-winning sound
designer Nicolas Becker and renowned
music producer LEXX. In groups of just
20, audiences are surrounded by shifting
visual and sonic landscapes, where a
series of thought-provoking otherworldly
scenes and moments of intimate interplay
unfold in every direction, expanding
perceptions of performance and the future
of entertainment.
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CHRISTMAS COMES EARLY TO THE
ALDWYCH THEATRE
In just a few weeks’ time, Christmas
will come early to the Aldwych Theatre
when Joel Montague, Carrie Hope
Fletcher and Aled Jones MBE will star in
the hit musical ELF as Buddy, Jovie and
Walter Hobbs respectively. ELF’s highly
anticipated return to the West End in a
strictly limited, 10-week Christmas
season, runs from 28 October to
3 January.
Based on the beloved 2003 New Line
Cinema hit starring Will Ferrell, ELF is
the funny and charming tale of Buddy,
who mistakenly crawls into Santa’s bag
as a baby and was raised as an elf! Way
too tall and not so great at his job,
Buddy is the North Pole’s biggest
misfit... and knows he’ll never belong.
When Santa tells him the truth, Buddy
heads to New York City to find his birth
father (who turns out to be quite high on
the naughty list). After causing some
merry mayhem in Manhattan, Buddy
finally discovers the gift of family and
falls in love. And when Santa’s sleigh
crashes in Central Park, it’s Buddy who
finds a way to save Christmas forever!
Aled Jones
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After two sold-out runs at the
Dominion Theatre and a record-breaking
holiday run at the Marquis Theatre on
Broadway, ELF will bring holiday cheer
to London with a brand-new set, adapted
for the dimensions of the Aldwych
Theatre by Tim Goodchild.
First staged at the Dominion Theatre
in 2022, this production became the
fastest selling show in the venue’s
history, going on to break its own box
office records during the subsequent
2023 run at the same house.
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