From dance archive to creative catalyst with Google AI
Editor's note: Sir Wayne McGregor, internationally renowned choreographer & director, collaborates with Google Arts & Culture to bring a Google AI powered choreography tool to the public.
My life's work as a choreographer and director is an endless inquiry into how we think with and through the body. It’s a physical investigation, driven by an insatiable curiosity about movement and its infinite creative potential. This questioning has transformed my studio into a laboratory — a space for relentless experimentation.
In 2019, I started a collaboration with Google Arts & Culture Lab to explore how AI could enable a more active dialogue with my 25-year body of work. From this, AISOMA was born.
AISOMA is a Google AI-powered choreography tool that acts as a creative catalyst by generating new, original dance rooted in my choreographic language.
I initially used it in the studio to expand, challenge, and interrogate existing movement sequences. Now, we’re bringing a new version of this tool online for anyone to create with, as part of my exhibition: Wayne McGregor: Infinite Bodies at Somerset House.
How You Dance with AISOMA
You are invited to perform a short dance. A custom AI then analyzes your movement and extends your sequence with original choreographic phrases, all rooted in my movement vocabulary. AISOMA has been trained on almost four million poses, extracted from hundreds of videos from my archive, spanning more than two decades of my work.
Working with Google Arts & Culture Lab, we developed a bespoke model using TensorFlow 2 and MediaPipe pose. This allowed us to move beyond 2D analysis we had in the first version of the tool and extract the poses of a human body in a three dimensional space, enabling us to map and comprehend the intricate, architectural grammar of a body in motion. It's about seeing movement and understanding the physical potential in a new light.
AISOMA isn't the final answer; it's a starting point. It’s an invitation for you to become an active participant in the choreographic and creative process.
Ultimately, dance making is an act of play, a physical language in a constant state of evolution.
From your dance to AISOMA. Extend your movements rooted in Wayne McGregor’s archive.
Experience Wayne McGregor’s AISOMA on Google Arts & Culture and also in my exhibition at Somerset House from the 30th October 2025 - 22nd February 2026.
