Choreographers: Crystal Pite and Simon McBurney
Dance has narrative; it has an expressive language of its own but rarely does it have such a directive political and scientific purpose as it does in the three year collaboration between Nederlands Dans Theater and Complicité whose trilogy of works begun in 2022 is being performed in full at Sadler’s Wells as part of a nationwide tour, adding the premiere of the final segment of Figures in Extinction. Exploring not just the human impact on the planet, but the very separation of people from the natural world through classification, philosophical reflection and the scientific mystery of death and grief, the increasingly talky approach sometimes distracts from the opportunities for dance.
The evening, which extends to 2 hours and 40 minutes with two intervals, begins with 2022’s Figures in Extinction [1]: The List, which focuses on the living and environmental losses accumulating across the last century, including those that are not yet completely extinct, from graceful birds to melted glaciers, majestic mammals to dried up lakes. This piece, co-choreographed by Crystal Pite and Simon McBurney, creates more than just impressions of their subjects but full dance interpretations of creatures and natural phenomena enhanced by Complicité’s atmospheric sound and visual effects. Built around the expansive rantings of a climate denier, the piece becomes more overt, boxing in the creatures with sliding flats while pulling back to reveal their bones as a child’s voice evocatively wonders if they are ever coming back.
The second dance, Figures in Extinction [2.0] but then you come to the humans from 2024 is less subtle and ultimately less successful as it structures itself around philosophies of brain science and the tendency for contemporary societies to “stand back from the immediacy of experience.” Almost entirely spoken through by voice-over, this begins as a lecture on the misapplication of neuroscience and the false division between the left and right portions of the brain, something we share with birds and other animals. So while the dance is polished and interesting, the persistence of the lecturer’s voice becomes a distraction from the language of the dance or using it as the core form of expression. And where the first part was provoking and provocative, this feels crass in its directness, leaving the audience less room to interpret and understand, as though McBurney and Pite’s left brain has boxed in the concept just as they argue that our collective minds have distanced us from seeing ourselves in and of the world.
The final chapter, Figures in Extinction [3.0] requiem, discusses death and feeling distanced from our ancestors. More acted sequences take the audience from family groups gathered round a deathbed to a catastrophic event where many die, all while mixing together a scientific summary of decomposition performed with jaunty jazz hands and a more reflective consideration of modern society’s separation from death. There is a lot to take in here too, and again, this need to verbalise can frustrate, especially when longer passages of uninterrupted dance build a more engaging momentum of their own.
It is an interesting collaboration that results in a distinctive style of dance performed to the spoken word with a lot to say about humanity’s relationship with nature, with itself and with the spaces between life and death, but as a collective work, it needs to evolve into something stronger and more coherent than its individual parts.
Runs until 8 November 2025
