«Working with the dancers has been a revelation.»
Choreographer Crystal Pite and director Simon McBurney in conversation
For the trilogy Figures in Extinction, choreographer Crystal Pite and director Simon McBurney collaborated for the first time. A conversation about the creative process.
How did the two of you meet?
Simon McBurney (SMB): We knew about each other and each other's work for a very long time, and had been eager to work together. I remember seeing Crystal in New York, when she was on tour with NDT 1. I saw The Statement, it was 2016. The experience was simply amazing. I was performing on Broadway at exactly the same time, and we were able to observe each other’s work on separate nights.
Crystal Pite (CP): I saw Simon there and I remember that seeing his work was a life-changing experience for me. He was there for The Encounter. I never forgot it, the force of that, the impact it had on me. And then we started talking and exchanging, and we discovered a shared interest in the concept of extinction. We found a way to meet on neutral territory, which was at NDT. I’ve been working with NDT for over 20 years, also as their associate choreographer. Being at NDT is like being home for me.
What does your creation process look like?
CP: We start working with content and language, ideas, and big questions. We find the best way to express those in different forms. Sometimes through text, exchanging books, essays, papers we’ve read. Sometimes it starts through the body or sharing experiences from our own lives.”
SMB: There’s a lot of impulse in making work. An intuition that helps decide if something is ‹right›. And we’re two people looking at the same thing and both of us sense that. It’s like having your eyes open to something else all of a sudden. It brings a lot of new possibilities when working with someone like Crystal.
CP: We have a constant feedback loop. It’s like tossing a ball back and forth when we’re in the studio. One plants the seed, the other adds water. Fluid, easy, intuitive, it’s organic between us. There’s also something very helpful in sitting back sometimes and being the observer when the other is taking the leading position. In our own companies we’re in a leading position all the time, but in this collaboration we can alternate roles. Leadership is a different part of the brain than the creative part. It’s a joy to play with that.
What is the trilogy Figures in Extinction about?
SMB: In Figures in Extinction [1.0] (2022) we created a series of portraits of animals and natural phenomena that have gone extinct. These portraits almost look like dreams. One of these amazing dancers/actors has extensions of horns on their arms, beyond what the actual animal had. It extends our human connection with the animal. The dancers are acting like these extinct animals, but not in a way where they’re trying to be the animals, but showing us where the animal lives in the body. We also explore how we look at animals, for example pets, in our lives and how they look at us. This specific relationship across the divide. There’s a sense of separation, but why are we separated from animals? We are animals.
CP:Figures in Extinction [2.0] (2024) is a response to the previous part. It’s a portrait of human beings, a mirror. We found inspiration in The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist and his theory of the divided brain. In the process we were interested in humans, trying to understand our own extinction. How did we get here? What is about us, our brains, our minds? What is at the core of the crisis that we’re in, the damaged relationship we have with the living world. The disconnect from ourselves.
SMB: This work felt like the launch pad for Figures in Extinction [3.0], the grand finale. The questions continued, a trajectory developed, making this final instalment the lone star we were moving towards all this time. It happened outside of our bodies, we were asking big questions about the unknown. In this third piece we’re focussing on the transience of humankind and why we’ve distanced ourselves from the dead. Where are they now? How are we to survive as humans if we’ve lost all sense of connection to ourselves, each other, our ancestors, and nature, amidst this climate crisis we’re in? In the creation process we’ve worked closely with the NDT 1 dancers and asked them about their families, their ancestors, and their histories. Making it an extremely intimate process for everyone involved.
What was it like to work with the NDT dancers?
SMB: It’s an advantage and privilege to work with these astonishing artists who are simply on another level.” Crystal: “The dancers are a matrix for us, they are the place where we meet. The dancers also have an enormous amount of input. They’re fearless, show no hesitation. Their ideas are aligned with ours, but sometimes they take us into another direction which inspires and surprises us. Working with them has been a revelation and transformative. They are a true force.
Interview: NDT
Between Elegy and Hope
Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT) is returning to Berlin after a long absence
In the three-part evening Figures in Extinction [1-3], choreographer Crystal Pite and theatre director Simon McBurney devote themselves to one of the most pressing issues of our time: the climate catastrophe. Through overwhelming imagery, they explore the complex relationships between humans and nature in the 21st century.
When two visionary artists collaborate — both of whom have achieved global acclaim for their almost magical creations on stage — something extraordinary can be expected. Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite and British actor and theatre director Simon McBurney spent several years and crossed continents exchanging their fears and cautious hopes for our time. Their research for a joint project on the climate crisis brought together a surprisingly rich spectrum of source material: from the sound of melting polar ice caps to the voices of climate change deniers, from academic lectures on brain neuroscience to the chatter of Instagram influencers. Over the course of four years, this material gave rise to three works for Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT1), with each part of the trilogy conceived as a response to the previous one.
1.Figures in Extinction [1.0] premiered in 2022 in The Hague and was awarded the prestigious Dutch Zwaan prize for the most impressive dance production. Through powerful images, it confronts us with everything on our planet that is vanishing — from the Pyrenean ibex and the caribou to the rainbow poison frog, the saber-toothed tiger, and the Chinese paddlefish, as well as glaciers and lakes destroyed by human hands. The 22 dancers of NDT1 create, with the use of puppets, colorful costumes, poetic videos, and Simon McBurney’s voiceover, a dance-theatre nature documentary that vividly presents the tragic procession of extinction.
2. The second part of the trilogy, Figures in Extinction [2.0] - But then you come to the humans, premiered in February 2024 in The Hague. As the title suggests, this chapter focuses on humanity, particularly our need for connection in a fragmented, information-overloaded world. The voice of neuroscientist and psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist can be heard offstage, warning urgently against neglecting our empathic, right hemisphere in favor of the data-processing left hemisphere. Humanity’s wonderful capacity to dream, to contemplate, and to empathize is at risk of disappearing forever — just like the species shown in Part 1. And this, the work suggests, could ultimately be our downfall.
3. The third part, Figures in Extinction [3.0], will have its world premiere at the Manchester International Festival in February 2025. Pite and McBurney continue their interdisciplinary exchange, but this time, they focus on the question of where our collective journey on this planet might lead next. Reliable answers are impossible, but the work offers many moving images filled with imagination and hope. Using creativity to cast a spark of light into the darkness and to reveal new possibilities for our future is the central concern of this final part.
Figures in Extinction [1-3] is a co-production by Nederlands Dans Theater and Complicité. The evening is commissioned by Factory International and co-produced by Parkstad Limburg Theatres Heerlen & Montpellier Danse. The ensemble of NDT1 performs.
Excerpt from Ballettzeitung, No. 4, Text: Maren Dey
