Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT1) & Complicité – Crystal Pite & Simon McBurney Figures in Extinction

Over the last four years, Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite and British director Simon McBurney have shared reflections, fears and hopes inspired by this day and age. Centered on the climate crisis, the trilogy Figures in Extinction created by the two artists for the performers of Nederlans Dans Theater now culminates in a meditation on death. However, this new work is not imbued with dark thoughts but rather the will to reconcile with death, the desire to embrace this unfathomable mystery we often discard from our lives when it should be a cornerstone. To that end, Figures in Extinction [3.0] enlists dance and theater resources in successive, aesthetically powerful visions in which a hospital bed appears, and the expressive power of bodies runs high. The piece tracks a strong intuition: to engage with big unanswerable questions like death can elevate and guide us collectively. This exciting leap into the unknown rounds off a trilogy that began in 2022 with Figures in Extinction [1.0] where the choreographer looked to the animal world as well as glaciers and rivers to find bodily states and run through the list of all endangered species. The second part from 2024 is centered on the functioning of the human brain and our insatiable need for connection to the world as symbolized by the blue lights of our phones. 

The trilogy asks provocative questions: how to name what we are losing? What does it mean to be witnesses of violence that we both inflict and is inflicted upon us? In this regard, it stays true to the long-held belief of the artists that art can change the world. Associate artist at NDT since 2008, Crystal Pite has tackled multiple social issues in her pieces, including bureaucracy, world diplomacy, and mass migrations. As to Simon McBurney, he has been acclaimed as an actor in film and a director in the theater, espousing the complexity of the world through an experimental and multidisciplinary approach to mise en scene, with the company Complicité he cofounded in 1983. 

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