April 20, 2026 |
Backstage at the Royal Opera House, nothing stands still for long. Bodies flicker in and out of focus, limbs stretching, resetting, repeating – a constant rehearsal of control. Into that charged precision steps Saul Nash, a designer who has built his name on movement, now translating his language onto one of ballet’s most exacting stages. The result is Wayne McGregor: Alchemies – running from now until May 6 – where choreography, sound and fabric lock into something newly alive, with Nash’s contribution coming through in the world premiere of the incorporated work Quantum Souls.
“I have been following Saul Nash’s career for quite some time,” says internationally renowned, multi-award-winning British choreographer and director Wayne McGregor. “He is a designer’s dancer and a dancer’s designer. He works with incredible technical fabrics that are cut for motion and he intimately understands the human form in flow.” It’s a neat summation of Nash’s practice – one that has always hovered between disciplines, never quite settling into fashion or dance because it insists on being both.
For Nash, the collaboration reads almost like manifestation. “I have admired Wayne McGregor’s work for as long as I can remember, he has always been a huge inspiration to me,” he says. “I remember going to the rain room several times when it [Random Dance – Rain Room – 2012] was at the Barbican.” That early fascination didn’t stay hypothetical for long. “I began to speak about it as something I wanted to do, and I eventually emailed Wayne’s team. At some point in future I received an email to meet Wayne for coffee and it all started from there…”
That origin story – equal parts persistence and chance – feeds directly into the tone of the work itself. Alchemies, McGregor’s latest for The Royal Ballet following 2024’s MADDADDAM, is set to a score by Bushra El-Turk, combining new compositions with earlier material. Live percussion from Beibei Wang adds a physical, almost architectural layer to the soundscape. Opening night draws from across the company – William Bracewell, Melissa Hamilton, Joseph Sissens – dancers whose bodies are as much instruments as they are interpreters.
Nash’s role within this, as the costume designer for Alchemies’ Quantum Souls is precise and expansive all at once. This is his first ballet commission, and he approaches it with the awareness that costume, here, is not just image but infrastructure. “It felt serendipitous; I was super appreciative of the expertise of the team at the Royal Ballet and all of the makers,” he says. “Designing costumes is a unique art in itself, as costumes not only have to look beautiful but also function and sustain the different number of shows in which they may be performed.”
There’s a quiet recalibration in that – away from runway temporality towards repetition, endurance, rigour. “It’s been a beautiful journey collaborating with Wayne and supporting him in bringing his vision to life in a way which catered to the specific needs of ballet.” The phrasing matters: supporting, not overshadowing. In ballet, ego dissolves into line, and line is everything.
Movement, of course, is Nash’s native language. His label has built a reputation on kinetic cutting, garments that respond to the body rather than restrict it. But ballet presents a different set of rules – codified, exacting, almost architectural in its demands. “Designing for movement and being a dancer myself, equipped me with the tools to design for ballet,” he explains. “However, every form of dance and movement is different and I was really intrigued to design for the specificities of ballet as an art form. How could I design something that pushed boundaries while simultaneously respecting the form and lines of ballet.”
That tension – push versus respect – sits at the heart of Alchemies. It’s there in the wider programme too. Yugen, first staged in 2018 to Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, returns with its spare, meditative force intact, shaped by Edmund de Waal’s set and Shirin Guild’s minimal costuming. Alongside it, Untitled, 2023 revisits McGregor’s dialogue with the late Carmen Herrera, her stark geometry translated into movement against Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s score. Both works are revivals, but neither feels archival; they operate more like coordinates, mapping where McGregor has been so the new piece can stretch further.
For Nash, the design process began not with silhouette but with conversation. “The costumes began with the intention to fuse my design DNA with Wayne’s world, so it really was a collaborative effort,” he says. “Wayne told me about a book he was reading and his intentions for the stage, the layout and his choice of colours. This informed how these elements were used on each costume.” It’s a reminder that in ballet, design is always relational – to light, to music, to space, to skin.
And skin is key. McGregor’s choreography has long been obsessed with the extremities of the human body – how far it can bend, extend, articulate. Nash meets that with fabric that behaves almost like a second epidermis, engineered for stretch, resilience, precision. The result is clothing that doesn’t just follow movement but amplifies it, tracing each line as it unfolds.
If there’s a future embedded in this collaboration, Nash is already thinking about it. “I am really inspired by movement and it is a part of my life, so I really do believe that ballet is another vehicle to visualise this.” It’s a simple statement, but it lands with weight. Because what Alchemies suggests, more than anything, is that the boundaries between disciplines are increasingly porous – that fashion can think like choreography, that choreography can dress like fashion.
And in that overlap, something sharper emerges. Not quite fashion, not quite dance – but something restless, exacting and entirely of now.
‘Wayne McGregor: Alchemies’ is on view at the Royal Opera House until May 6, discover the performance and book tickets here. Photography courtesy of the © 2026 RBO – photographed by Andrej Uspenski.
