Finally! On the very last weekend, this year’s Edinburgh International Festival redeemed its fatuous slogan “The truth we seek” by bringing us the Scottish premiere of the completed Figures in Extinction (three parts), a collaboration between choreographer Crystal Pite, Complicité’s Simon McBurney, and the wonderful dancers of Nederlands Dans Theater. Neither Pite nor McBurney has been known to shrink from engaging with the issues of our sorry days, and here they focused on the separation of humanity from the natural world and the destruction of that world, either through our ignorance, greed or just not caring. Voice-overs (McBurney and actors, along with scientists and other authorities) guided us by question-and-answer through this thicket of uncertainty while dancers, stunning video and lighting, sound and music played out the tragedy.
The first part [1.0] the list, was a shocking itemising of the species that have been lost over the past century. On and on went the tragic list in surtitles as the dancers – never ‘pretending’ to be animals – evoked the very essence of creatures, among them caribou, poison frog and, most movingly, an Asiatic cheetah, its sad, scattered skeleton miraculously reassembled before our eyes. And you just knew that a caribou would galumph like that. But there were also obscure insects, rare orchids and, yes, rivers and glaciers. All gone. As a bit of comic relief, a climate change denier popped on like a music-hall entertainer to claim it was all fake news. What an opener…
In [2.0] but then we come to the humans, it began with a depressingly familiar scene, with dancers in grey suits sitting on chairs, glued to their phones and texting furiously as voice-overs dictated urgent events around them. It moved into a serious consideration of brain function (left and right hemispheres, frontal lobe activity…) and how this dictates behaviour.
Are we complicit in our own doom? This was serious stuff, but constantly leavened by the dancers. Crystal Pite is a past-master at moving around large groups of dancers, her choreography tight and meticulous. Here they moved as one element, perfectly in tune as they covered the stage in patterns. When emotion overcame them, their rage and despair were palpable, heads in hands. But suddenly, in the midst of this general torment, a couple began a slow pas de deux of extraordinary tenderness: touching, falling and embracing, they offered a glimpse of redemption.
In the third part, [3.0] requiem, it brought together the other parts by questioning the very nature of death and our own extinction in the light of what had gone before. Relatives gathered round the bedside of the dying; we pondered the physical decomposition of a body. Elements of the other two parts recurred, reminding us that we’re all made of the same stuff and in the end humanity matters no more than the vanished cheetah or rare macaw.
Serious issues interrogated through spoken word, music, lighting, and especially the amazing dancers of NDT who can make you smile and weep even more than the voice-overs. It was a thrilling evening created for thinking people. Talk about saving the best till last…
By strange coincidence, however, the following evening at the Book Festival, the wise and wonderful Richard Holloway, straight-talking ex-Bishop of Edinburgh, quoted Mary Oliver’s poem that ended: “…like the wild geese, harsh and exciting/over and over announcing your place/in the family of things”.
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