Deepstaria
Deepstaria
By Studio Wayne McGregor
Deepstaria
For Studio Wayne McGregor
Deepstaria is a choreographic hallucination - a descent into the depths, where light bends, time distorts, and bodies ripple like fluid organisms. Inspired by Deepstaria enigmatica, a rarely seen deep-sea jellyfish, the work conjures an alien ballet of transformation. Dancers slip between forms — lines melt into curves, convex folds into concave — their figures revealed in translucent organza and shadow.
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At the centre of the stage: a square void constructed using Vantablack Vision™, the super-black material originally developed for space optics. It absorbs 99.9% of light, creating an optical absence - a surface that appears dimensionless. Rather than consuming the entire space, this void becomes a gravitational point around which the choreography flows. Light streaks through haze like bioluminescence through ocean silt, occasionally erupting into geometric rain or pulses of milky luminosity.
Sound, too, plays its part. Created by Nicolas Becker and LEXX, the score evolves algorithmically using Bronze AI, resisting predictable rhythm or melody. The result is disorienting, immersive - a world that feels both tender and dangerous, beautiful and unknowable.
Services
Set Design
I was commissioned to design the set and visual environment for DEEPSTARIA, working closely with Wayne and his team from early movement workshops through to final production.
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To create the visual sensation of void and mass, I co-developed a new ultra-black tiling system with The Nano Coatings Company — integrating Vantablack Vision™ into modular, stage-ready units for the first time. These tiles were suspended in a layered arrangement to create a shifting architecture that played with shadow, reflection, and absence.
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The result was a set that distorted spatial awareness — at once absorbing and refracting light — forming a fluid, living frame for the choreography.
