Juilliard + Rambert School + Studio Wayne McGregor
Sadler’s Wells East, London
May 1, 2026
AUGMENTED, which premiered at Sadler’s Wells East on May Day is a school show like no other. Two schools of impressive lineage: The Juilliard School in New York and Rambert School in London, assisted by the wizardry of MAM + AISOMA and choreography by Wayne McGregor, unite to present a groundbreaking work in a brilliant hi-tech setting.
This is the new world of cooperative partnering between AI and humans. MAM (Mind and Movement) and AISOMA, the Google Arts and Culture machine learning collaboration, are McGregor’s radical choreographic thinking tools that powered the initiative. Marking the end of the yearlong collaboration, what were initially two stand-alone works seen in the United States and UK respectively, developed through trans-Atlantic visits and AUGMENTED was the exciting result.
Photo Yiling Zhao
A stripped bare stage had sound artist, DJ Yraki on stage with keyboard desk throughout, creating a sound score that set the mood and rhythm. The thirty-three dancers, 18 from Julliard and 15 from Rambert, all casually dance dressed, worked under spectacular lighting from Theresa Baumgartner. Cross beams cut through the grainy atmosphere catching the dancers in their light and changing colour to suit the mood.
The heart of the evening was the dance, and this was a shared enterprise. The AI generated dance motifs were developed by the student dancers under guidance of McGregor’s artistic team working on both sides of the Atlantic before coming to East London where the final curation, editing and shaping was done by McGregor. The result conferred a strong sense of ownership on the dancers. There was an attitude towards the work of ‘This is mine, I made it’. The sense of commitment was powerful and never wavered in the hour-long show. You come to realise that dance is a shared language although sometimes spoken with a different accent.
Photo Yiling Zhao
Within the group, there was room for brief solos, ensemble work and a great deal of highly skilled partnering. Suiting current athletic trends in lifts and throws there was plenty of excitement and again the commitment and consideration for other dancers was impressive. The movement style was recognisably McGregor, thrusting legs, angular shapes and wrestling torsos, the dancers delivering a good finish to lines and well able to cope with the speed and the stamina.
The pace, after an initial slow start, built to a high energy, fast-paced level driven by the music, a tricky score that the dancers successfully matched to the tricky movements, despite the multiple entrances and exits. As a grounding for working in the profession, it was an excellent training for students. Of course, students at vocational dance schools will also need to learn the company rep and maintain their dancers’ bodies for the diverse range of dance styles the profession demands. However, as an opening for a possible future for dance allied to AI materials, here you have it. It also made a very pleasurable evening of youthful dance.