The British choreographer Wayne McGregor is to stage an adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s trilogy of dystopian novels Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam in a major international collaboration between the Royal Ballet and the National Ballet of Canada.

With the palindromic title MaddAddam, the three–act ballet will have its premiere in Toronto in November and reach London in 2022. It features a specially commissioned score from Max Richter and reunites the creative collaborators from McGregor’s acclaimed 2015 production Woolf Works, which brought together three novels by Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway, Orlando and The Waves.

Karen Kain, artistic director for the National Ballet of Canada, praised McGregor for his “intelligent, visually stunning and highly physical work that continually pushes the boundaries of creativity” and said that the ballet will be “firmly rooted in the Canadian landscape, exploring themes of extinction and invention, hubris and humanity and activism”. Kevin O’Hare, director of the Royal Ballet, said it was “a dazzling opportunity for dancers from both of our companies to relish”.

Atwood’s nightmarish SF trilogy was published between 2003 and 2013; the books are set in the near future and feature a pandemic, monstrous pigs and all manner of catastrophes. “It is our world,” the author said, “except with a few twists.” The director Darren Aronofsky had hoped to bring the series to television but that plan faltered and another version is now in development for TV.