Disappearing Act

Making its long anticipated debut at Sadler’s Wells, “Figures in Extinction" is perhaps the brightest new feather in Nederland Dans Theater’s cap. It’s an ambitious project, a collaboration between associate choreographer Crystal Pite and artistic director of the acclaimed theatrical group Complicité, Simon McBurney, with the expert dancers of NDT treading the boards. It has already enjoyed a tour across various other European cities before beginning its sold out run in London.

Performance

Nederlands Dans Theater: “Figures in Extinction” by Crystal Pite and Simon McBurney

Place

Sadler's Wells, London, UK, November 4, 2025

Words

Eoin Fenton

Nederlands Dans Theater in “Figures in Extinction” by Crystal Pite and Simon McBurney. Photograph by Rahi Rezvani

The piece is split into three acts, all linked to themes that come with the word extinction. It’s a loaded, heavy word, and there is certainly no shying away from the burden of that weight. The first act is perhaps the most affecting. “Figures in Extinction [1.0],” which made an impact in its Sadler’s Wells run in 2023 as part of a mixed bill, looks at extinction in its most recognised form: the extinction of nature. An army of plainly dressed dancers reanimate various species of plants and animals and the occasional glacier or lake. Perhaps the most affecting is the critically endangered Asiatic Cheetah. Its puppeteered skeleton prowls about the stage in near silence, staring at us with a feline insouciance before collapsing back into a pile of bones. As each animal leaves us we feel a sort of gut punch, this danced séance is the closest thing we may ever have to seeing these creatures walk this earth again.

This is, however, not just a work of dance, but a collaborative work of dance and theatre. McBurney’s contributions are no less impactful. His voiceover, which lists out the extinct like the death notices of a local paper, mounts in agitation. The act ends with a young girl’s voice enquiring about the fate of the extinct passenger pigeon, “Did it go away? Will they come back?” Her voice again opens the second act, “Figures in Extinction [2.0],” now focusing on a group of idle office workers sat in chairs, “why aren’t they moving?” While the first act was led mostly by Pite, McBurney takes the helm in the second.

Nederlands Dans Theater in “Figures in Extinction” by Crystal Pite and Simon McBurney. Photograph by Rahi Rezvani

This act is far wordier, sitting somewhere between a podcast and a lecture on neuroscience. The dancers begin to scroll on their phones, finding their little escape from the humdrum world. There’s some recipe videos and games of ‘guess the flag,’ but largely these humans are weighed down with the profundity at their fingertips, constantly reminded of the doom to come. The dancers act out a lecture on the left-right division of the brain in animals and humans through lip syncing and mime. We learn of the human’s burning desire for bureaucracy and order that separates us from other mammals, leading us to AI, the Pandora’s box of our time. As chaos begins to grow, so too does a little flame of hope in the form of a cradling duet, melting into each other like wax. They may be insignificant, but they’re insignificant together.

McBurney throws a lot into the short act, it’s not easy to really chew on all the concepts at play—though it quite deftly executes that overwhelming feeling you get when absorbing the break-neck media of today. McBurney’s writing, though sometimes shameful and depressing, doesn’t wade in nihilism. Rather, it feels like a Brechtian wake-up call, demanding us to be in touch with our fleshier side, with what is animal and natural. To save our empathic humanity from extinction. “Figures in Extinction [3.0]” concerns itself with perhaps the most natural act of all, dying. While jointly crafted like the other acts, this act sees a truer balance between Pite and McBurney.

Nederlands Dans Theater in “Figures in Extinction” by Crystal Pite and Simon McBurney. Photograph by Rahi Rezvani

The dancers are reminiscent of “A Chorus Line,” lined up and standing casually on stage. Each one comes forward sharing the names of their parents and grandparents, and when the generations before them passed away. A giant black box on the stage lifts to reveal a hospital room where various families say their final goodbyes. Jay Gower Taylor’s reflective backdrop, often seen in works by Pite, projects the flickering souls that enter the ether to divine effect. The dancers run about the stage, falling into each other while escaping their mortality like a breathing doom painting on a cathedral wall. The panic sets our minds elsewhere: Sudan, Palestine, Ukraine.

This final act is even more comprehensive than what came before, guiding us through the dancers’ testimonies, the logistics of death in the modern world, the stages of decomposition, and musings on where the spirits of all the humans before reside now. It’s a little bloated. It feels that with each act the story boarding got increasingly cluttered. But, whenever we do return to the kernel of this idea of extinction, of both personal and profound loss, it makes for moving stuff. Crystal Pite, the titan that she is, still manages to always cut to the core.

Eoin Fenton

Eoin (they/he) is a dance maker and writer based in Cork (Rep. of Ireland), and London (UK). They have danced across Ireland and London in venues including The Place, Project Arts Centre Dublin and Galway Cathedral. Eoin graduated with a BA in Choreography from Middlesex University in 2024 and began writing as part of the Resolution Reviews programme. They are a regular contributor to A Young(ish) Perspective.

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