Figures in Extinction review – life, death and a heartfelt plea for Earth's creatures, humans included

The Guardian

20-02-2025

It's a state of the nation piece. Actually, not the nation, the whole globe, humanity itself. Not as pompous as that sounds. Necessary. This is the world premiere of Figures in Extinction as a full three-act work (in the UK, the first act was performed as part of Nederlands Dans Theater's own tour). It is a meaty piece from Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite and Complicité director Simon McBurney, rich with thought and heart and a plea for the future of the Earth and its creatures, humans included.
McBurney's directorial hand brings clarity, with voiceovers lip-synced by the dancers; Pite's movement turns the stage into a living thing, the dancers' bodies expanding on the text. They are expert (along with the wider creative team – special nods to sound designer Benjamin Grant, Tom Visser's lighting, Arjen Klerkx's video) at shaping atmosphere, the morphing shades of silence, sorrow, humour, fear and relief.
The dancers of Nederlands Dans Theater are awesome in their technical ability. They easily inhabit any number of textures and timbres of movement, the long sweep and tightly specific gestures of Pite's choreography, but also the myriad animalistic forms that populate the first act, a list of species that have become extinct in the last century, Bachman's warbler to the Spix's macaw, narrated by the soft gravity of McBurney's voice (and his daughter's). The comical appearance of figure number 15 'climate change denier' is all too sobering, because there's nothing extinct about it.
The second act, entitled But Then You Come to the Humans, puts homo sapiens under observation. 'She moved!' shouts a girls' voice, like a visitor to the zoo watching the inert group. It turns into a lecture on the brain (the text by psychiatrist and neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist), left hemisphere versus right, the qualities of fine focus and technical detail versus broader vigilance and empathy, then the frontal lobe, which gives us imagination, but also deception. There's a sense of creeping dystopia, and a powerful question about what is innate to human nature; will we bring about our own downfall by following our natural instinct?
The third act, Requiem, goes deeper into death itself. It's jarring, upsetting, to see a hospital scene of relatives saying goodbye to a loved one followed directly by a voiceover on the stages of human decomposition accompanied by a jazz waltz. It's a jolt to the system, a reminder that we are matter, much the same matter as every other living thing, no more or less than the Asiatic cheetah or splendid poison frog.
They look to find hope through ancestral connection. I'm not sure how successful that is. But what Pite embeds in the piece is a deep belief in community. The choreography itself proves that, its bodies breathing as one, the power of the mass, networked like fungi roots under the forest floor. Most potently, in the midst of the second act's apocalyptic essay appears a duet. Two people, connecting with such empathy, tenderness, support, curiosity and steadfastness, that it is impossible to believe we are doomed.
At Aviva Studios, Manchester, until 22 February.