Figures in Extinction

Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite and British director Simon McBurney share the considerations, fears and hopes of our times in a trilogy about the climate crisis.

Developed over the last four years for the performers of the Nederlands Dans Theater, Figures in Extinction now comes to a close with a meditation on death. Somber thoughts do not inhabit this new creation, but rather the will to embrace this unfathomable mystery, too often dismissed from our lives when it should be central to them. To this end, Figures in Extinction [3.0] mobilizes the mediums of dance and theater in a series of visions in which the expressiveness of the body is pushed to the limit. The piece follows a powerful intuition: that confronting major unanswerable questions, such as death, can help us grow and guide us collectively. This stimulating leap into the unknown closes a trilogy initiated in 2022 with Figures in Extinction [1.0], in which Crystal Pite adapted bodily states from the animal world, as well as from glaciers and rivers, ticking off the list of everything on our plant that is on the brink of extinction. Created in 2024, the second part is centered on how the brain works and our insatiable need to connect with the world. The trilogy poses a dizzying question: what does it mean to witness a violence of which you are both perpetrator and victim?