The week Figures In Extinction opens at Berlin’s Deutsche Oper, a heatwave is burning a path through Europe. It’s an ominous chiming of the themes this piece grapples with (climate breakdown, destruction of the planet) and is very much not a drill. Over the course of ten days, news outlets estimate that 2300 people died across 12 European cities, while biologists warn of stress and behavioural changes in wildlife. The day before the company arrive in Berlin, the mercury hits 37 degrees. If there was ever a show to be grimly prescient, it is this collaboration between theatre company Complicité and dance troupe Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT).

How does it feel for both companies seeing and feeling the production’s themes played out in real time? ‘Unfortunately, extremely relevant,’ says Emily Molnar, artistic director of NDT, as we sit in the dark-but-still stiflingly warm auditorium of the Deutsche Oper. ‘It makes me even more confident about the fact that we pursued doing this for four years.’ Dance, Molnar says, can often be quite an abstract medium with which to tackle complex issues but, through the collaboration between choreographer Crystal Pite and director Simon McBurney, both companies found a way to integrate voice, body and visuals to create a coherent response to ‘very deep questions and topics’. 

Molnar was always keen, however, that the piece, despite an unflinching approach to its subject, would also carry a kernel of hope. ‘It is extremely important (and I think they do it in a very respectful way) that people don’t walk away feeling like they can’t take action,’ she says. We humans may have lost our way, but Molnar firmly believes we have the power to bring ourselves back. ‘The minute we don’t look at ourselves and the people next to us, then we can let other parts of the natural world go. But the minute that we check in and go deeper and listen from the inside, you can’t let your neighbour not be noticed.’

The production came together in stages, constructed in three separate parts, created across continents by Canada-based Pite and London-based McBurney, working via Zoom calls and in-person rehearsals. In ‘1.0’, dancers take the form of extinct animals (and even landscapes), majestically conjuring Pyrenean ibexes, flickering birds, shoals of fish and arctic tundra. Providing counterpoint to these tender elegies is a climate-change denier, lip-syncing a slick monologue, using the amplified gestures that have become a trademark of choreographer Pite’s work and reminding us of the human agency behind the mass extinction.

‘2.0’ homes in on our brains, with dancers drilling movement patterns to a soundtrack of neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist’s seminal lecture on left and right brain hemispheres. As our technological ‘development’ as a species spirals into chaos, a moment of beautiful, breathtaking physical connection between two performers reignites the power of touch and understanding. In the final part, ‘3.0’, rituals of death are explored in personal and visceral detail. 

This last part has been in some ways the most emotional for the dancers to perform, as it calls on their personal histories and experiences with death. ‘We had a long process of digging up a lot of our personal lives,’ explains principal dancer Nicole Ward. ‘It starts with us speaking about our family trees. We spent quite a few weeks with each of us sharing our families. We didn’t know each other in that way, so it holds a lot of care between us.’

As with ‘2.0’, the final part focuses on connections between people. ‘It’s when we connect with the audience,’ says Ward, ‘then you really feel the gravity of it. And it feels so nice to be able to hold space in art for topics that are constantly whooshing by us all the time. We probably become quite numb to them. Social media is giving us everything every day. It’s nice when we can hold the audience and also hold ourselves in a really physical reminder of those things.’

The ability to create immediate connection is undeniably one of live performance’s most powerful attributes. And yet both Molnar and Complicité’s creative director Tim Bell accept that touring a large-scale live production about the planet’s decline around the world comes with its own contradictions and complications. ‘It’s a really thorny question,’ says Bell. ‘How do we tour in the age of extinction?’ He explains that using video calls for parts of the collaborative creation process helped reduce the production’s carbon footprint. Complicité are also working with the Theatre Green Book, an initiative that promotes sustainable practices in theatre, including for international touring shows. Meanwhile, NDT had already pledged to revise their practices before Figures In Extinction was begun, taking trains where possible, using sustainable dyes for costumes, and only touring their second company, NDT2, every two years.

‘It’s at the forefront of our minds all of the time,’ says Bell. ‘We have to, as an organisation, change the way we’re working.’ As a producer, Bell says the issues can be complex, and there aren’t always quick fixes. ‘It’s about trying to find ways to give people time to learn how to do their jobs differently. If you’re asking freelancers to light a show in a different way, or create a set in a different way, they can’t fall back on the things they normally do. You’re going to have to give them more time and expertise to do that. And of course, we’re getting it wrong all of the time. We are making mistakes all the time. We are being hypocritical. We are not perfect. But it’s important that we have the conversation.’

Ultimately, Molnar says, you have to believe that the balance lies in the benefits live art brings to inspire positive change. ‘If we are separated from ourselves, we will do things that are aggressive in society, or we will take less responsibility,’ she says. ‘We believe, still, that art can track a conversation that is very hard to deal with in other environments, like lobbying. We can unpack certain things that are very hard to unpack, because we can unpack them in a more abstract way, that allows people to feel something. That is what art as a bridge can always do when it’s done well.’

Figures In Extinction, Festival Theatre, 22 August, 8pm; 23 August, 2pm, 8pm; 24 August, 3pm.