Nederlands Dans Theater & Complicité

The Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT) is making a guest appearance at the Staatsballett Berlin with an extraordinary project: Figures in Extinction, a trilogy about climate change that choreographer Crystal Pite and director Simon McBurney are developping over several years at the NDT.

«We are living in an age of extinction. Can we ever hope to give a name to what we are losing? What does it mean to bear witness to a violence in which we are both perpetrators and victims?» Across continents, these world-renowned artists have exchanged ideas reflecting on their fears and cautious hopes for the age we are living in, and how artists can meaningfully create in the face of mass destruction. Now NDT and McBurney’s company Complicité present a major new collaboration that has seen these artists work together over four years to create three new works for NDT 1, each developed in response to the last. The first work, Figures in Exctintion [1.0] premiered in The Hague in 2022 and was awarded the «Zwaan» (Swan) for the most impressive dance production in 2022. The second work, premiered in February 2024, is a searing examination of our need for connection in a separated world. In Figures in Extinction [2.0] - But then you come to the humans, a complex scientific text sounds from off-screen, warning us not to neglect our empathic right brain in favour of the data-processing left. The third and final piece will continue this cross-disciplinary exchange, premiering in the UK in February 2025, and offering a spark in the darkness as to where we might go.

Founded in 1959, Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT) is a leading international contemporary dance company dedicated to the research and creation of new work. Complicité is an international touring theatre company based in London led by Artistic Director and co-founder, Simon McBurney. Complicité creates work that strengthens human interconnection, using the complicity between performer and audience that is at the heart of the theatrical experience. Complicité works across art forms, believing theatre, opera, film, radio, installation, publication and participatory arts can all be sites for the collective act of imagination.