Woolf Works - Our House to your House Series

Online premiere: Friday 26 June 2020 at 7pm BST, broadcast free online as part of the Royal Opera House’s #OurHouseToYourHouse series.

Virginia Woolf defied narrative conventions to depict a heightened, startling and poignant reality. Wayne McGregor’s ballet triptych Woolf Works was inspired by the writings of Virginia Woolf and has an original score by Max Richter. It was created for The Royal Ballet in 2015 and met with outstanding critical acclaim, going on to win McGregor the Critics’ Circle Award for Best Classical Choreography and the Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production. The Observer described it as ‘a compellingly moving experience’; for The Independent it ‘glows with ambition… a brave, thoughtful work’; The Guardian concluded that ‘it takes both McGregor – and the concept of the three-act ballet – to a brave and entirely exhilarating new place’.

Woolf Works re-creates the emotions, themes and fluid style of three of Woolf’s novels: Mrs Dalloway, Orlando and The Waves. These inspirations are also enmeshed with elements from her letters, essays and diaries such that Woolf Works expresses the heart of an artistic life driven to discover a freer, uniquely modern realism. It brings to life Woolf’s world of ‘granite and rainbow’, where human beings are at once both physical body and uncontained essence.