Making moves for people’s names was a clever way to tie choreography into a first session and the simplicity made it a good intro to choreography for people that might not have done it before.

Chicken in the Henhouse was a riot (especially with 3 in a group) and I feel like it was, as games often are, a good way to bond the class and make us all feel a little less awkward around each other. I certainly felt a little less self conscious afterwards.

I liked that Hannah got involved and made sure there weren’t any students left out.

The choreography session was slightly tricky as it was working with new people on a 1-1 basis and it still felt slightly awkward, however once the communication got flowing properly, Emily and I had a nice little routine that suited us both.

Working our way up to making the small piece of choreo, doing it in stages, helped me feel less overwhelmed in a first session with making a sequence than if it had simply been “Make up 8 counts of 8 in 10 minutes go.”

Overall I had a good first choreo session, it helps that I enjoy choreography anyway as well. I’ll probably find myself using the method of making positions then connecting them when I make pieces in the future. I’m looking forward to next Monday!

I enjoyed getting to create something with Emily that worked for both of us and matched our individual abilities.

The connected positions were fun to come up with and it was interesting to try and work our way around them as we filled the gaps with moves in and out of the poses.

Ever since I heard the song I wanted to make a combination to at least the chorus and I've had the start sitting for a while. I used the empty studio space to flesh out the combo a little and add on more to bring it to a nice finish.

Talking about stimulus vs theme helped me wrap my head around the differences between the two and how they both influence choreography differently.

Learning the piece of rep was one of my favourite bits. I actually really enjoyed listening to Hannah talk about her piece because it sounded really interesting, especially when she talked more about the discussion and backstory that went into making it. The theory behind choreography is just as interesting as the dancing in my opinion.

I loved making my own section, I love choreography in general and I think it's really cool and special how we can create something entirely our own to then combine with other peoples ideas. I drew on a few personal experiences that related to the idea behind the original piece and it actually helped more than I thought.

Coming to the end of the class when we formed the full piece and properly made something out of so many pre-existing combinations was a fantastic learning moment on how collaboration can really make a difference as well as how something that starts small can evolve so quickly over just a few hours.

I thought that session was great fun and it was a lot better doing it this year rather than the NPA simply because we had more people which made room for more ideas and different takes on the same topic.

I enjoyed working emotions into my choreography and really expressing something through movement properly was slightly easier as the source was something I was familiar with feeling.

The way we all worked off of each other pieces during the group section was so much fun, seeing how everyone interpreted things differently.

Choosing the one that resonated with us the most to choreograph to allowed for some great freedom of choice as well.

Working with Cassidy to combine our pieces was good for co-choreographing and it was beneficial to stick with the same partner for the rest of the session.

Choreo for alternative spaces was quite fun, if a little scary (stairs!!!). It was nicely challenging to alter and amend the piece to suit the space, it was tricky to not just do the same thing all the time with the stairs because it felt like a lot of walking up and down at the start before we started to think more creatively. The windowsill was easier although we had less space to work with which was also a small hurdle to jump.

The class definitely helped with getting used to more stimulus and making your own creation work alongside someone else's. It was a good introduction to alternate space choreo and I think it'll help going into the site specific project.

Working together with Cassidy was great as we listened to each other's suggestions and made something we both enjoyed.

It forced me to think harder on how to connect my moves and how to interpret each movement, for instance, taking the word 'roll' and making it a head roll.

Going into music appreciation later in the session was really cool to me and I enjoyed matching my piece to part of the music I'd chosen through the use of dynamics and properly listening to the beat. The piece of music I chose (the slightly harsher bit) was nice to dance to because I love dynamic movement.

Taking our combination across the floor was rather tricky as mine was very static so adapting it wasn't the easiest. I think it ended up the best it could've, I mean I truly did move so I see that as a win. The travelling, though challenging, helped me start identifying weak areas in my choreography style.

I thought it was really cool how everyone's solo was so different despite us all having similar numbers to work with. Everyone really made it their own and I find that incredibly awesome.

I love, love, loved employing dynamics in my solo and taking pauses helped to break up the fast pace I had going.

The use of levels was much more noticeable in everyone's work which was nice to see. I think the order of the moves according to the phone number sort of forced us to think about how to connect the down and up more than we usually would.

Seeing how everyone interpreted weather differently was so cool and piecing it together was a great way of coming up with linking movements or figuring out how someone's move could be turned into a linking movement.

Making the bigger dance piece in the smaller groups was quite fun though we had a few hurdles with trying to make so many different ideas work but I think it turned out great in the end and you can really see the variation in the dance from different people's input.

Working in formation and using changes in spacing made us really think about how to make the piece flow and I think it was a good challenge.

We put a lot of our own touches on the piece instead of just using what we had been given, we added the shunts at the stat, the swaying cannon and we had people come in at different times while the chores got more energetic to make it appear like more people = more intensity in the moves, to resemble a storm.

I really liked the final product and the creative process was a very good tool for choreo that I'll probably use going forward, especially when setting creative tasks, as it brings your class together.

I'm really into the album Hot Fuss by The Killers right now and the two songs I used (Glamorous Indie Rock and Roll + All These Things That I've Done) are some of my favourites, the album itself is very important to me too.

I've not done too much improv outside of our Monday choreo class and it was so so nice to move and just feel the music without having to care so much about wether what I was doing was pretty or not.

I actually really like my work to ATTTID, I feel like it's a good showcase of my contemporary style and I'm quite proud of this little ball of moves I've made, for being as critical of myself as I am, it's nice to like it like that.

We really got to create something that was truly our own out of such little prompt and I enjoyed how each group's work was similar in places but overall such far cry from what we started with and from what we each ended up with.

I loved the sway canon because I thought it was a really effective visual.

Keeping Erin as the centre piece or "the eye of the storm" was a nice touch to ground the piece and to give it focus and direction.

I always enjoy working with Isla seeing as we're very synchronised dancers and we work well off of each other's energy.

Our piece ended up looking really nice and fluid, even though while I was dancing it there felt like there were some sticky parts.

I thought the process was slightly tricky because obviously you want to do something more interesting than just laying your leg on someone else's for example, you also want to make them look interesting but not awkward. I think most of our positions were good but could potentially have been tweaked if we'd had more time.

Learning to join positions together to make a fluid piece is one of my favourite ways to choreograph, even if rather than pausing in the position you just move through it instead, I really enjoyed that and I'll definitely use that method while choreographing my own stuff.

I particularly enjoyed the section where Isla spirals me up off the floor, we pause and then we have her spiral down and up again, I just think it was a really nice bit of choreo and it worked really well. The same applies to the partnered spin to the floor that comes after.

Working with Isla was wonderful as always and I think we have a good chemistry when we dance together, which our piece reflected (at least in my eyes). Like I said I thought our final piece was nice despite a few sticky bits during the dance and creative process.

Everyone else's pieces were really nice, some were quite fluid while others were very dynamic, everyone's touch points were so interesting and I really liked how well everyone seemed to work together.

They've made four original productions, the first being TRIBE (2014) then TERRA INCOGNITA (2015), NIGHTSHIFTER (2018) and HOME (2022), all of which have toured nationally and/or internationally. Their newest work, LANDSLIDE, is due to debut in 2026.

I thought the box method was cool and fun in theory but in practise it was a lot more difficult than I'd anticipated. I tried my best with the activity but I don't think it's for me. It was good to be challenged though!

I worked with levels quite a lot in this session and I think it's nice that I'm getting more comfortable with using levels in my choreography. I also moved in a new way because of having to follow the rules of the method.

It was a really interesting way of making choreography and I found it to be very different from a lot of methods we've tried before, sort of a dancey version of twister.

Maybe if I tried it again I'd like it a little more because I thought it did sound cool in theory, next time I could adjust the box size or spend more time on my moves so I can create something I like a but more.

I enjoyed getting to write my own "script" for the body part and the place in the box then having to swap it over was cool so you were still following a set of guidelines that you didn't expect and couldn't plan ahead.

I liked having to lead yourself with different parts of the body, it was new and I liked the challenge of incorporating different muscle groups to get you where you needed to be.

I'll potentially use this going forward but I'd need to give it another go to see if I do enjoy it as a choreography method.

He's choreographed works such as Chroma (2006), Infra (2008), Woolf Work (2015), The Dante Project (2021), ABBA Voyage (2022) and UniVerse: A Dark Crystal Odyssey (2024).

He is the artist directer for his company Studio Wayne McGregor and resident choreographer for The Royal Ballet.

He was also appointed CBE in 2011 and was awarded a knighthood in the 2024 King's Birthday Honours for services to dance, he was officially knighted on the 1st of April 2025.

McGregor has worked with cognitive scientists to really break down and analyse his creative process to look at the way he works with his dancers when it comes to making performances. From this research came The Choreographic Thinking Tools, these focus on working with stimuli, noticing things about the stimuli and turning these things into movement.

Isla and Faith were good with my choreography but I think I need to be a little firmer with what I'd like going forward because I didn't want to come across as pushy. They both did fantastically though.

Some rehearsals took place after classes so we were already warm, in others when we weren't as warm I'd get them to mark it or do it to the best of their ability in that moment. Cool downs mostly consisted of sitting and talking about other details of the piece and sharing thoughts so far.

I changed choreo where necessary and made sure that my dancers were alright with what was being asked of them.

There were quite a few rehearsals that Faith couldn't attend so in the end, to take some pressure off the both of us, I decided to be in my own piece. The last few rehearsals were just me and Isla.