Review by Clara
Neon Dance’s ‘Last and First Men’ feels like a pre-emptive eulogy for humanity. This performance brings together multiple disciplines: literature, as the source material is a 1930 science fiction novel by Olaf Stapledon; music, in the form of an ever-present orchestral score by Jóhann Jóhannsson and Yair Elazar Glotman, recorded by the BBC Philharmonic; film, being Jóhann Jóhannsson’s posthumously-released 2020 directorial debut, providing a backdrop; and dance, which is the foregrounded live element. Through this layering, the various artistic contributions are in conversation with one another.
‘Last and First Men’ is an intense performance in terms of the existential questions it asks the audience to engage with, and the accompanying emotions that might be elicited. It is a reflective and melancholic piece. I enjoyed contemplating the vastness of time and space, but the overall pace was a little glacial for me. Perhaps this reaction is a psychological turning away – a rejection of that which is difficult but vital.
⭐⭐⭐½
Tickets were gifted in return for an honest review
Neon Dance’s ‘Last and First Men’ feels like a pre-emptive eulogy for humanity. This performance brings together multiple disciplines: literature, as the source material is a 1930 science fiction novel by Olaf Stapledon; music, in the form of an ever-present orchestral score by Jóhann Jóhannsson and Yair Elazar Glotman, recorded by the BBC Philharmonic; film, being Jóhann Jóhannsson’s posthumously-released 2020 directorial debut, providing a backdrop; and dance, which is the foregrounded live element. Through this layering, the various artistic contributions are in conversation with one another.
Under the film’s premise, the last men have reached back across eons of time to communicate with our species, the first men. Tilda Swinton’s dulcet tones, narrating, introduce us to grand developments beyond our reckoning such as the rise and fall of successive species of humanity, and their species’ ability to act as a group mind. The last men also bring news that humanity will end. “Astronomers have made a startling discovery,” she announces, “which assigns a speedy end to humankind.”
There is some beauty in this imagined future of humanity, but much of it feels like a warning that we could be too blind and powerless to heed. Will the last men’s message truly “help the past make the best of itself”? The atmosphere of doom is amplified by the music reverberating throughout the auditorium, sometimes soaring choral vocalisations, sometimes ponderous and dirge-like, sometimes crescendoing klaxons. The visuals of the film are full of slow pans across war monuments in former Yugoslavia, austere and imposing.
Against this fertile artistic conversation, three dancers (Fukiko Takase, Kelvin Kilonzo, and Aoi Nakamura, directed by Adrienne Hart) move in ways that flicker between human and alien, or perhaps an uncanny hybrid of the two. They bring an organic, graceful quality that serves as a counterpoint to the desolation invoked by the narration, the music, and the visuals. Their movements evolve as the narrative progresses – questing, rocking, huddling in the face of the inevitable.
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| Photo by Camille Blake. |
They made use of a few evocative props (credited as “artefacts”), including full-face masks that connect two dancers via numerous threads, which render them temporarily faceless but closely tied together. A notable technique was when they balletically balanced on their toes while wearing futuristic-looking bubble-soled sneakers.
In a piece about resilience, equanimity, and how to face doom, the dancers provide a point of visual interest that softens the hard edges of this heavy narrative. They are like us and yet not like us. There is a strangeness to their physicality, and yet they are all we can root for in the face of an uncaring cosmos.
There is another participant in this artistic conversation whom I have not yet drawn attention to: the audience. As one among the audience, my contribution to the conversation is thus: humanity’s fate reminded me of the closing lines of Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’:
“Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;”
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;”
The poem continues, perhaps more hopefully:
“One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
“One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
‘Last and First Men’ is an intense performance in terms of the existential questions it asks the audience to engage with, and the accompanying emotions that might be elicited. It is a reflective and melancholic piece. I enjoyed contemplating the vastness of time and space, but the overall pace was a little glacial for me. Perhaps this reaction is a psychological turning away – a rejection of that which is difficult but vital.
⭐⭐⭐½
‘Last and First Men’ was performed at The Coronet Theatre in London from Thursday, 26 February 2026 to Saturday, 28 February 2026.
Details of upcoming productions at The Coronet Theatre are available at: https://www.thecoronettheatre.com/
More information about Neon Dance can be found at: https://www.neondance.org/
More information about Neon Dance can be found at: https://www.neondance.org/
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| Photo by Parcifal Werkman |
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