Choreographer: Sadeck Berrabah
Music: TRex
When starlings flock in the evening sky, they will twist and loop into mesmeric patterns. Individually, they are merely flying: together, their murmuration is bewitching.
It is understandable, then, why French choreographer Sadeck Berrabah has chosen Murmuration as the title for his work that takes individual movements by a 30-plus company of performers to perform something similarly magical.
Yet for the most part, this is not a dance piece as we would traditionally think of it. Indeed, for the opening movement nearly all of the company are either kneeling, sitting or standing still, three banks of ten performers in black trousers and baggy T-shirts. That mode of dress means that their forearms and hands stand out. Wrists locked, their flesh forms uniform units of construction, allowing them to be used to create geometric shapes like a human K’nex.
It is the speed and precision with which patterns form, disappear, undulate and radiate that impresses so much. The planning and execution required to create such mesmeric forms, like the starlings, encroach upon the limits of comprehension. Instead, all we can do is sit back and enjoy the artistry and visual spectacle.
As the music by DJ TRex switches between beat-heavy EDM and more nuanced trip-hop, the company changes with it. The previously motionless dancers arrange themselves on stage, but while their perambulatory motions are coordinated, it is the precision of their arm placements that dominates the visual attention.
At one point, some performers roll their trousers up to the knees so that bare shins and feet can be combined with other performers’ arms and hands to create even more intricate patterns. But even with that variation, there is a rigid level of conformance visible throughout.
Lest the regimentality of the work dominate too much, some 40 minutes into the billed hour, we do get some dancers going all out with some loose breakdancing, albeit still backed up with the geometric performances from the rest of the company. Occasionally, the ensemble hollers whoops and cheers of encouragement, which, after the rigidity and conformity of the rest of the piece, feels both welcome and out of place.
After the main work completes and the dancers take their first bows, Berrabah emerges on stage to thank his creatives and teach the audience some basic hand moves from the piece. It’s a fun way that both demystifies some of the process, and also reinforces the difficulty of the work we have just witnessed, a tremendous feat of precision, geometry and love for the natural world.
A final encore number routine by the whole company uses reflective umbrellas and white T-shirts glowing blue under UV light to bring a little variety into the same process that has governed the piece in its entirety. Rather than a similarity to starlings, this section evokes other types of natural movement, such as a sea anemone collapsing in on itself in response to a threat, or waves of colour change sweeping over the skin of an octopus.
Whether the additional props are necessary, though, is another matter. The use of limbs alone emphasises Berrabah’s point quite well enough: nature is full of geometric wonders, and the shapes that occur are captivating.
Runs until 20 September 2025
