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Figures in Extinction

 
Mark Harding Review by Mark Harding 5 Published: 23 Aug 2025 Festival Theatre Show Dates: 22 Aug 2025-24 Aug 2025

Expectations rightfully run high. Figures in Extinction is like the return of 1970s supergroups: Simon McBurney’s theatrical inventiveness and Crystal Pite’s dazzling choreography, working with the renowned Nederlands Dans Theater. Crikey!

Deals with the most important questions there are

Section [1.0] presents “figures” of things that have become extinct due to human activity. The stripped-down human bodies – without crass anthropomorphism, imitation, or costumes – capture the characteristics of birds, a frog, a collapsing glacier, a herd, by their gait, alertness, or the shape and undulations of the herd collectively. The lighting design, by Tom Visser, is acute, highlighting features so that the humans become “other” and remote – but sometimes, almost relatable, depending on the animal.

Section [2.0] is the unifying “humans” section of the three pieces. The voice-over is mostly a recorded lecture on the different modes of attention of the left and right sides of the brain. The left is focused, abstract, mechanistic; the right is intuitive, implicit, relational. Modern society is dominated by the left-hand side. The dancers, dressed in suits for this section, illustrate the lecture. They split into two sides, take turns as the ‘lecturer’ – miming while mirroring the words with gestures and movement – and representative tableaux appear and disappear at lightning speed (internet gossip, an autopsy, dominance, the prefrontal cortex). The video design, by Arjan Klerkx, is strikingly used to amplify the theme of specific scenes.

Section [3.0] is Requiem. The final theme explores the relationship between the living and the dead. This section has the most abstract recorded text, while simultaneously featuring the most emotional and affecting dancing and acting, enhanced by the music of Owen Belton and Benjamin Grant, expertly positioned throughout the production to support the action on stage.

Evocative hospital scenes are acted out, with stunning set design and props by Michael Levine, combined with abstract dance sections and hallucinatory tableaux on the experience of death. The performers are in full medical costume for some scenes or dressed in their own clothes when giving personal reflections. The hospital deathbed scene brings to mind the work of video artist Bill Viola, while later scenes with the bed are reminiscent of Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa.

Throughout each section there is analytical, abstract, quantitative text – all left hemisphere. There is a constant play of tension and resolution between this and the intuitive, elusive, implicit right-hemisphere actions and tableaux of the dancers – especially in the gorgeous solos and duets that abandon text in favour of expression and emotion.

Considering the piece deals with the most important questions there are – extinction and death – the overall effect is contemplative rather than emotional. The unifying theme is our culture’s emphasis on left-hemisphere thinking and the resulting cost to the world and human well-being. The show’s balance of left and right demonstrates a solution, and the combination of talents has achieved a production where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

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The Blurb:

SCOTTISH PREMIERE

Dance and theatre legends Crystal Pite and Simon McBurney unite with internationally acclaimed Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT) to confront the climate crisis through spellbinding movement and sound.

We live in an age of disconnection – from the natural world and one another. Can we name what we’re losing? What does it mean to bear witness to a destruction we both cause and endure?

Returning to the International Festival following sold-out performances across Europe, NDT and Complicité present Figures in Extinction. This collaboration between visionary choreographer Crystal Pite and groundbreaking theatre-maker Simon McBurney confronts hard truths about humanity's impact on the world and explores art’s meaning in the face of mass destruction. Both artists are celebrated for their International Festival triumphs – Pite’s inventive Assembly Hall and McBurney’s boundary-pushing The Encounter.

Fusing contemporary dance with striking soundscapes and dialogue – from the crack of melting ice caps to the jarring chatter of social media influencers – Figures in Extinction calls for unity in a fractured world, finding a collective spark of hope in the darkness.

Listen on Soundcloud or Spotify.

Supported by James and Morag Anderson

A keepsake freesheet is available at the venue for this performance.