This November, The Royal Ballet presents the European premiere of Royal Ballet Resident Choreographer Wayne McGregor’s MADDADDAM, a new three-act ballet inspired by Margaret Atwood’s acclaimed trilogy of novels: Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam. Set to a newly commissioned score by Max Richter, McGregor explores the themes of extinction and invention, hubris and humanity, love and loss in this exhilarating exploration of life beyond societal collapse.
A co-commission between The Royal Ballet and The National Ballet of Canada, MADDADDAM received its world premiere in Toronto in 2022. The ballet is inspired by the landscape of Atwood’s native Canada, set in a dystopian speculative future in which a bio-engineered apocalypse has changed the Earth as we know it.
This is Wayne McGregor and Max Richter’s third collaboration for The Royal Ballet, following the award-winning Woolf Works in 2015 and Infra in 2008. Atwood joined the creative team as creative consultant for the creation of MADDADDAM in 2022. With costume design by Gareth Pugh, set design by We Not I, lighting design by Lucy Carter, film design by Ravi Deepres, dramaturgy by Uzma Hameed and sound design by Chris Ekers, McGregor reunites a sensational list of creatives for his twenty-first work for the Royal Opera House stage.