Review: Figures in Extinction (Sadler's Wells Theatre)

Review by Stephen Gilchrist

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The more dance performances I see, the more I am impressed with how innovative and powerful this art form can be. This presentation, jointly by NDT, the Dutch contemporary dance company headquartered in The Hague, and Complicité, the British theatre company founded in, is a prime example of what dance can achieve.

  Figures in Extinction is a programme of three half hour dance pieces – all of which have been previously premiered at different times – which tries to examine the human condition, the disregard of mankind for the global mass destruction of species and the natural world, the increasing lack of connection between humankind and the world in which we live, and how the living deal with death. This may sound a somewhat dour, depressing, and pretentious evening at the theatre, and some may say that this is so. But the work, taken as a whole, is so forceful, the imagery so powerful, often so witty, and the storytelling so skilful that we are drawn into this artful entertainment.

The show is jointly created by the Canadian choreographer, Crystal Pite and the founder of Complicité, the actor, playwright, and theatre and opera director Simon McBurney. Pite has created more than sixty works for companies such as The Royal Ballet, The Paris Opera Ballet, and the National Ballet of Canada. She addresses themes such as trauma, addiction, conflict, consciousness and mortality. She choreographs in contemporary and neo-classical dance styles. Under McBurney, Complicité uses extreme movement to represent their work, with surrealist imagery and often involving technology such as projection and cameras, when covering serious themes. Between the two co-creators, they are an artistic force to be reckoned with.

The first of the three pieces is entitled ‘the list.’ This is an innocuous title for a performance which is both exquisite and moving. To a soundscape of pulsating noise, music, and text, the company reflects and represents in balletic form, those species which have become extinct to the plaintive questions of a child asking whether they have gone forever and to extracts of a text by John Berger, who has written about how the ancient relationship between man and nature has been broken.

Their slow death is never better exemplified than in the puppetry of a cheetah, its bones resurrecting but ultimately laying down in death. This is contrasted with a climate change denier, moving and mouthing in mime to an overdubbed soundtrack, the idea that climate has always changed naturally, and who are we to challenge God’s intentions? It is at once funny, glib, and brilliantly executed.

The second ballet, subtitled ‘but then you come to the humans’, is presented as a sort of lecture on the divided brain and based on a text by Iain McGilchrist, a psychiatrist, philosopher and neuroscientist. In summary, I think it states that the more we know, the more we do not know. As humankind has evolved, we rely more on the left hemisphere of the brain which is focused on information and detail and have left behind the right hemisphere which handles the unexpected, and interconnection with the living world, and so we are increasingly disconnected from each other.

If this sounds as dry as dust, it is not. The choreographic forms and stage pictures present by Pite through the ensemble moving, often in unison, sometimes robotically, stretching, swaying, and then breaking out into chaos is spellbinding, captivating, and entrancing.

The third piece I considered to be the weakest. Entitled ‘requiem’. This ballet means to demonstrate our connection with death, how we grieve, and how the living are connected to the dead. To the spoken text by John Berger, “The dead surround the living. The living are the core of the dead. In this core are the dimensions of time and space. What surrounds the core is timelessness,” death is displayed in all its forms, the lingering death of a hospital patient, the response by grieving family, the offhand response to the death by the medical professionals and the ceremonials in all its forms. It is not that this segment of the evening was not brilliantly executed, it is just that the narrative had run out of steam well before the conclusion. But this critique does not take away from the extraordinary urgency of the message, within which this programme had been curated by its creators

There are no stars in this company. The entire ensemble of some thirty dancers perform, truly, as an ensemble, as one body. And as that body they represent humanity. That is not to say individual dancers do not on occasion demonstrate their sweep, their dexterity, the nimble footedness at particular moments. There is no gender designation in the steps, movements of relationships. All are ‘humankind.’

All three ballets are performed against abstract settings which lack colour, deliberately so. Likewise, costuming is bare, and grey. The dancers perform largely in half-lit, in pools of light, and so when in the third segment a bright white hospital room is exposed, the effect is all the more disconcerting. The lighting design by Tom Visser adds mood to the themes of the evening and it is accompanied by reflective light backdrops designed by Jay Gower Taylor.

I return to my initial thought about the capacity of dance theatre creators always to come up with new ideas, not just in choreographic style, but in finding increasingly ingenious ways of telling a story, or, as in this production, defining characteristics and experiences of human existence, such as birth, emotion, conflict, morality, and death.

Figures in Extinction plays at Sadler’s Wells Theatre until November 8th

For tickets and information visit https://www.sadlerswells.com/whats-on/nederlands-dans-theater-complicite-figures-in-extinction/

Photos by Rahi Rezvani