Nederlands Dans Theater & Complicité Bring FIGURES IN EXTINCTION to Sadler’s Wells Theatre

This autumn, world- renowned dance and theatre titans Crystal Pite and Simon McBurney join forces with the dancers of Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT) in a culmination of their years-long collaboration Figures in Extinction, which runs at Sadler’s Wells Theatre from Wednesday 5 to Saturday 8 November 2025. NDT’s associate choreographer Crystal Pite, known for her boundary-pushing work in dance, and Simon McBurney, influential and innovative theatre-maker and Artistic Director and co-founder of theatre company Complicité, unite their visionary practices to explore how artists work amid mass destruction. Figures of Extinction is an NDT and Complicité co-production.  

Over the last four years, fuelled by the urgency of our times and the increasing global destruction they were witnessing, Pite and McBurney have weaved their hopes and fears for our current moment into this moving and timely dance trilogy. The result, Figures in Extinction, is a cross-continental conversation split into an evening of three half-hour works which fuse dance, performance, spoken word, documentary and music, performed by NDT 1.  

In Figures in Extinction, Pite and McBurney contemplate whether we can 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? 

Pite and McBurney were first introduced by their companies, NDT and Complicité, for their shared physical approach to performance, and were instantly captivated by each other’s work. The trilogy began with Figures in Extinction [1.0] the list, a meditation on the species and environments we have lost (2022), followed by Figures in Extinction [2.0] but then you come to the humans, a portrait of our disconnection from one another in a separated world (2024), and concluded with the presentation of the complete triptych earlier this year at Aviva Studios, Manchester which included the never-before-seen Figures in Extinction [3.0] requiem, an exploration of our relationship with the dead.  

Before the performances at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, Figures in Extinction is being performed at Edinburgh International Festival (Friday 22 August - Sunday 24 August), and Théâtre de la Ville, Paris Wednesday (22 October – Thursday 30 October). This is the first full presentation of the trilogy at Sadler’s Wells Theatre.   

‘We’ve known about each other and each other’s work for a long time and were eager to collaborate. There’s a strong impulse in creating work - an intuition that helps you sense if something feels ‘right.’ When two people are looking at the same thing and both feel that, it’s like suddenly opening your eyes to something new. Working with someone like Crystal brings many new possibilities. And of course, it’s both an advantage and a privilege to work with the NDT dancers.’ – Simon McBurney.  

‘I remember seeing Simon’s work, it was a life-changing experience for me. When we started talking and exchanging ideas, we discovered a shared interest in extinction. 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 the NDT dancers has been a revelation and transformative. They are a true force.’ – Crystal Pite.  

Simon McBurney is an actor, writer, and director, and co-founder and Artistic Director of world-renowned theatre company Complicité. Recent work alongside the Figures in Extinction trilogy includes; Mnemonic, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Can I Live?, The Encounter and The Dark is Rising. As an actor, he has appeared in films such as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), The Theory of Everything (2014) and Nosferatu (2025). His most recent work at Sadler’s Wells was in 2023 with the premiere of Figures in Extinction.  

Crystal Pite has been an associate choreographer with Nederlands Dans Theater since 2008, is an  

Associate Dance Artist at Canada’s National Arts Centre and an Associate Artist at Sadler’s Wells in London. In 2002, she founded her own company in Vancouver: Kidd Pivot, which tours both nationally and internationally.  Pite’s work was last shown at Sadler’s Wells in 2024 with Angels’ Atlas, performed by The National Ballet of Canada, as well as Kidd Pivot’s Assembly Hall, for which she and Jonathon Young won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production in 2025.   

The lighting for this production was created by Tom Visser, who earlier this year was nominated for the Olivier Award for his work on Angels’ Atlas, part of Frontiers: Choreographers of Canada – Pite/Kudelka/Portner at Sadler’s Wells.