Wayne McGregor: Infinite Bodies
Somerset House, Embankment Galleries
30 October 2025 - 22 February 2026
Opening at Somerset House on 30 October 2025 will be a groundbreaking exhibition dedicated to the polymath practice of internationally renowned choreographer and director Sir Wayne McGregor CBE. Marking the culmination of Somerset House’s 25th birthday celebrations, it will offer a bold exploration of McGregor’s three-decade career.
Entitled Infinite Bodies, this landmark exhibition explores how McGregor’s investigations into the body, movement and cutting-edge digital technologies have radically redefined our perception of physical intelligence. A series of multi-sensory choreographic installations, performances and experiments will take over Somerset House’s Embankment Galleries, including spectacular new commissions. Extending the experience beyond Somerset House, a major off-site installation will also be presented at Stone Nest in London’s West End — forming part of a city-wide celebration of Infinite Bodies.
McGregor’s work has been experienced by millions worldwide. He has been at the forefront of contemporary dance for over thirty years, creating epoch-defining works with his own company of dancers, Company Wayne McGregor. He is Resident Choreographer at the Royal Ballet and Artistic Director of La Biennale di Venezia and choreographed the revolutionary ABBA Voyage concert in London. He has created works which have been performed at some of the most prestigious international venues including Lincoln Center in New York, Milan’s La Scala, Paris Opera Ballet and Sydney Opera House.
Infinite Bodies invites audiences to encounter McGregor’s creative practice beyond the stage, a space where choreography meets cross-disciplinary investigations. Visitors will step into a richly interactive experience, where they are invited to participate in the creation of unique, responsive choreographic encounters.
They will also be able to engage directly with his world-class ensemble of dancers when Company Wayne McGregor takes up residence on dates throughout the duration of the exhibition, activating works and facilitating interaction. Infinite Bodies will become at once a laboratory, workshop, rehearsal and generative space, all revealing the extraordinary potential of the human body in an age of rapidly advancing technology.
Reflecting the collaborative nature that defines Studio Wayne McGregor’s creative home in East London, the exhibition features collaborations with world-leading artists, designers, musicians, and technologists, such as Industrial Light & Music, the multi–Academy Award winning visual effects studio founded by George Lucas, artist group Random International, Oscar-winning sound designer Nicolas Becker, renowned music producer LEXX, and artists Ben Cullen Williams and Jeffrey Shaw. McGregor also continues his creative exchanges with visionary collaborators such as fashion designer Gareth Pugh, visual artist Theresa Baumgartner, photographer Indigo Lewin, and filmmaker Ruth Hogben.
The exhibition also extends beyond Somerset House with a major accompanying commission, On the Other Earth, a 3D 360-degree post-cinematic performance experience created in collaboration with Hong Kong Baptist University and Hong Kong Ballet, and co-commissioned by Somerset House, located just a short walk away in the heart of the West End.
Infinite Bodies offers a bold reimagining of our relationship with ourselves and our bodies - now and in the future. It is the concluding exhibition to a year-long celebration of Somerset House's 25th birthday, marking its radical transformation to an unrivalled centre for cultural innovators and an internationally acclaimed arts destination. This exhibition exemplifies Somerset House’s commitment to creative innovation and challenging conventions, examining the intersections of art, performance, installation, and digital experience.
Sir Wayne McGregor CBE said:
“It is a rare and thrilling opportunity for a choreographic artist’s work to be experienced in an exhibition context where time spent with each creative expression can be longer and less transient than on stage. Infinite Bodies invites visitors to explore the power of movement through dance, design, and technology – it invites us to experience choreography beyond the stage.”
EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS
This first-of-its-kind exhibition is rooted in choreographic design, powered by digital data and physical experience. Part innovation lab, part collection of embodied creative experiments, it showcases a diverse array of works that incorporate motion capture, machine learning, AI interactivity, and digital imaging, alongside hybrid realities and robotics. The installations explore themes such as the future of the body and our evolving sense of self, highlighting the radical possibilities that emerge when movement intersects with rapidly advancing technology.
A new commission, created in partnership with Industrial Light & Magic opens Infinite Bodies, integrating cutting-edge visual effects with choreography. The work creates an experience that pushes the boundaries of digital embodiment, introducing the potential of ‘infinite bodies.’
AISOMA, a collaboration with Google Arts & Culture, is a key part of McGregor’s ground-breaking amalgamation of machine learning, AI and the choreographic process. Trained using over 25 years of McGregor’s dance archive, AISOMA generates original movement material, creating a live dialogue between the dancer and McGregor’s body of work. Originally designed as a tool for McGregor and Company to use in Studio, the interactive application will be updated for Infinite Bodies, enabling visitors to have their own choreographic conversations with AISOMA.
McGregor has collaborated with acclaimed art group Random International (known for their installations utilising cutting-edge technology) since 2008. Future Self is a vibrant choreographic light installation experienced in real time. Over 10,000 light points LEDs respond to the audience’s movements, generating a composite volumetric ‘living’ sculpture. The work explores themes of presence, self-recognition, and our relationship to others.
Also, in collaboration with Random International is the striking installation-performance No One is an Island. The work explores the evolving relationship between humans and machines, bringing dancers into live interaction with a kinetic light sculpture that attempts to simulate biological movement in the most minimalist manner. The correlating motions gradually shift from mechanical movements to gestures that feel eerily human. Inspired by Random’s and McGregor’s research into cognitive neuroscience, No One is an Island explores our human capacity for empathy with machines and the related vulnerabilities that emerge in these relationships.
The dramatic, site-specific installation entitled A Body for AI is a collaboration between McGregor and artist Ben Cullen Williams, originally created as the visual and choreographic component to an orchestral presentation. At its centre is a striking installation: a kinetic sculpture that opens and contracts rhythmically as if breathing. Its sculptural wings serve as dynamic projection surfaces, animated with AI-generated sequences drawn from McGregor and Williams’ previous explorations into machine learning. A Body for AI embodies the evolving dialogue between technology and the human body; a bold reflection on identity - the real and the artificial, time and space, dance and landscape.
In Deepstaria Void, McGregor conjures a highly sensory, meditative acoustic space, filled with a composition designed by Oscar-winning sound designer Nicolas Becker (Gravity, Arrival, Sound of Metal) and renowned music producer LEXX. Together, they create an acoustic image that is continuously recomposed and performed by their bespoke digital audio engine, Bronze AI. Presented in an environment with limited lighting, the installation focuses the senses and heightens the audience’s perception of sound, space and presence, redefining the boundaries between live and digital experiences. Deepstaria Void’s soundscape will extend beyond the room it is staged in, permeating the overall exhibition and drawing the works and spaces together with a unifying, multi-sensory approach.
Infinite Bodies will also include two substantial presentations that showcase some of the cross-disciplinary collaborations that have taken McGregor beyond the stage work he is renowned for. One room will house a triple-projection film space that features music videos, fashion installations, and experimental performances. A second space will become a living archive, showcasing rarely or never-seen-before prototypes, models, notebooks, experiments, and working studies drawn from the Archive of Studio Wayne McGregor. Here, the themes and technologies used in the larger installations in Infinite Bodies find connecting links and precursors, revealing lines of experimentation and investigation that have unfolded over decades.
Presented as part of the exhibition offsite at Stone Nest, a contemporary and experimental performance space in Soho just a short walk from Somerset House, a new work by Sir Wayne McGregor will premiere in the UK as part of Infinite Bodies. On The Other Earth, the world's first post-cinematic choreographic installation refracts, evolves and reimagines dance performance in a startlingly original new form within Jeffrey Shaw's radically immersive cylindrical, 360-degree stereoscopic LED cinematic screen work. Combining choreography, performances (Company Wayne McGregor and Hong Kong Ballet), digital imaging, multimodal sensing, AI, and spatialised sound with Shaw’s revolutionary interactional techniques, McGregor transports his audience in a thought-provoking, otherworldly encounter.
This large-scale installation features a cylindrical structure, eight metres wide and four metres high, with 400 LED panels, 26 million pixels and a 32.4-channel surround sound system, to redefine audience engagement with dance, blending performance and digital imagery in an immersive experience.
Dr Cliff Lauson, Director of Exhibitions at Somerset House and co-Curator of Infinite Bodies, said:
“As the home of cultural innovators, it’s a privilege to present this bold and awe-inspiring project with Sir Wayne McGregor, one of our nation’s best choreographers and creative thinkers. Drawing Somerset House’s special 25th birthday year of programming to a spectacular close, Infinite Bodies will redefine the exhibition genre through an experiential and performative mix of installations, artworks, and applied technology. Through movement and dance, the exhibition is a rare invitation for visitors to become reacquainted with their physical selves and to ask broader questions about technology and society.”
Curated by Dr Cliff Lauson, Director of Exhibitions at Somerset House, and writer Philippa Dunn.
PUBLIC PROGRAMME
The exhibition will feature a programme of talks, music, workshops, events, and relaxed sessions, to be announced shortly.
CATALOGUE
The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated publication featuring texts from Sir Wayne McGregor, neuroscientist Anil Seth, writer and broadcaster Aleks Krotoski, the Curators, and more. Designed by renowned London-based The Bonton, the publication will be the first publication to survey McGregor’s creative and experimental work off the stage.
EXHIBITION DESIGN
London-based architectural practice We Not I, designers of Studio Wayne McGregor at Here East and collaborators on many of McGregor’s best-known works, are applying their distinctive creative visual language to Infinite Bodies.
NOTES TO EDITORS
Dates: 30 October 2025 - 22 February 2026
Press enquiries: Sahar.Beyad@somersethouse.org.uk / press@somersethouse.org.uk
Press images: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/0bbi1dpypbu4rbasib0iv/AEjX6oJ_eFVNx2xNmIDmqmo?rlkey=gvh8fftr8tyh9jjvt1gpqo2hv&st=vvqowa20&dl=0
Website: www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/wayne-mcgregor-infinite-bodies
ABOUT PROFESSOR SIR WAYNE MCGREGOR, CBE
Professor Sir Wayne McGregor CBE is a multi-award-winning British choreographer and director, internationally renowned for trailblazing innovations in performance that have radically redefined dance in the modern era. He is Artistic Director of Studio Wayne McGregor, Resident Choreographer at The Royal Ballet (since 2006), and Artistic Director of Dance for La Biennale di Venezia (since 2021).
McGregor is regularly commissioned by and has works in the repertories of the most important dance companies in the world, including Paris Opera Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, La Scala Ballet, New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, Royal Danish Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, and Australian Ballet. He is in demand as a choreographer for theatre (Old Vic, National Theatre, Royal Court, Donmar) opera (La Scala/Royal Opera, ENO), film (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Legend of Tarzan, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them 1 & 2, Sing, Mary Queen of Scots, Audrey, The Outrun), music videos (Radiohead, Thom Yorke, The Chemical Brothers). ABBA Voyage, the revolutionary concert that launched the Swedish pop sensations back onstage in an outstanding avatar performance in 2022, choreographed by McGregor, continues into 2026.
McGregor studied Choreography at Bretton Hall, University of Leeds. He is Professor of Choreography at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music, and President of Elmhurst Ballet School. He is Vice President of the Roundhouse, London, an Ambassador for The Arts Foundation, UK and is a Patron of The Place, London. He has Honorary Doctorates from The Royal College of Art London, Plymouth University, University of Leeds, University of Chester, and UAL and is part of the Circle of Cultural Fellows at King’s College London. In 2017 he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the British Science Association.
McGregor's work has earned him a multitude of awards including four Critics' Circle National Dance Awards, two Time Out Awards, three South Bank Show Awards, two Olivier Awards, a Prix Benois de la Danse and two Golden Mask Awards. In 2011 McGregor was awarded a CBE for Services to Dance and in 2021 was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Prix de Lausanne. In 2024, His Majesty King Charles III appointed Wayne McGregor a Knighthood in the 2024 Birthday Honours List.
ABOUT STONE NEST
Stone Nest is an arts organisation and performance venue in the heart of London's West End, bringing exceptional and experimental art to a wide audience. An iconic former Welsh chapel, it is a hidden gem nestled amidst the bright lights of theatreland, offering a platform for bold, visionary artists and a space where audiences can encounter an eclectic programme of contemporary performance.