Sunday, November 20, 2011

Wayne McGregor's 'Entity' review: Order from chaos

A danced investigation of movement exploring the intersection of creativity and cognitive neuroscience: Is there anything that sounds drier and less sexy? And yet, that inspiration results in a giddy, sometimes thrilling, occasionally frustrating blend of motion, ideas and imagery in Wayne McGregor's "Entity," which his London company, Random Dance, performed last weekend at the Novellus Theater in its Bay Area debut as part of San Francisco Performance's fall season.

Parsed out in two acts - the first with music by composer Joby Talbot and the second an electronica score by Coldplay collaborator Jon Hopkins - "Entity" explores a kind of metascience, a creation examining the way we create. It's a heady topic to take on through the medium of dance, in which technique, speed and stamina have advanced to a dazzling degree and yet our understanding of the brain-body connection that inspires choreographic creativity is limited.

Wayne McGregor's 'Entity' review: Order from chaos...

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