Wayne’s world

Ballet would have been an obvious revenue stream for Sadler’s Wells when it reopened back in 1998 but straight-up classics have been few and far between over the past two decades — the Rothbart of the Royal Ballet of Flanders’ Swan Lake wore a live owl on his head. And yet, while the theatre’s programming fights shy of tutus and toe shoes, its fiercely contemporary output can sometimes bridge the notorious gulf that has traditionally divided classical and contemporary audiences.

Wayne McGregor has been resident choreographer at the Royal Ballet since 2006 but combines this role — and countless international projects — with his directorship of his own company, whose Autobiography premièred at the Wells earlier this month. It is not a straight narrative (perish the thought), but 23 distinct elements (one for each pair of chromosomes) delivered in an order that varied nightly thanks to an algorithm based on Mr McGregor’s genetic code.

The shuffled vignettes are performed (exquisitely) by ten dancers beneath a grid of wire pyramids and strafed by Lucy Carter’s foggy blades of light. McGregor has toned down his trademark hyperextensions and there is a whiff of the barre about the language with dancers zipping through beaten steps, pirouettes and pretty chains of turns.

Merce Cunningham was randomising dance back in the 1950s. It’s still a valid creative tool, but it is hard to sustain for 90 minutes. Fine as a promenade installation in the Tate’s Turbine Hall, but it makes for unsatisfying theatre.

Structure was only one of the weaknesses of Shobana Jeyasingh’s Bayadère — The Ninth Life, a contemporary Indian take on Marius Petipa’s cardamom-scented 1877 masterpiece. The 60-minute, ten-man show premièred at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Studio two years ago but has been pimped and revised for the 29-year-old company’s Sadler’s Wells debut.