FIGURES IN EXTINCTION [3.0] by NDT/ Complicité at Amare in The Hague and tour

7th February – 29th March.

Simon McBurney, Artistic Director of Complicité, and NDT associate choreographer Crystal Pite are creating a triptych together. The award-winning Figures in Extinction [1.0] (2022) confronts us with everything that is dying on our planet. Part [2.0] is a penetrating investigation into our need for connection in a divided world and premiered in 2024. Now follows the third part of the triptych.

NDT and Complicité present a new full-length work by Crystal Pite and Simon McBurney

We live in an era of extinction. Will we ever be able to name what we are losing? What does it mean to witness a violence of which we are both perpetrator and victim?

Choreographer Crystal Pite and Artistic Director of Complicité Simon McBurney, each on a different continent, exchanged ideas about both their fears and their tentative hopes for our time. Their process is based on a rich and surprising collection of sources: from the sound of melting ice caps to the loud protests of climate deniers, from neuroscience lectures on the brain to the cacophonous cackle of Instagram influencers.

Over a period of four years, the two world-renowned artists have created three works for NDT 1 together, each developed in response to the previous one. Figures in Extinction [1.0] confronts us with everything that is dying on our planet, while [2.0] is a penetrating investigation into our need for connection in a divided world. The third and final work continues this interdisciplinary exchange, with a world premiere in the United Kingdom in February 2025. This work offers a glimmer of light in the darkness for where we – together, spiritually and full of imagination – may be heading.

“The penetrating Figures in Extinction [2.0] – but then you come to the humans by Crystal Pite and Simon McBurney shows that humanity is losing exactly that and that, if we are not careful, this will be our downfall.” – Trouw