Sadeck Berrabah: Murmuration Level 2

Peacock Theatre, London
September 10th, 2025

There is no doubt that the ensemble in Sadeck Berrabah’s Murmuration Level 2 is beautifully drilled and work with an admirable precision in choreography that refuses to be labelled. But imagine a world where the only trace of humanity resides in robots. Expressionless and mechanical, only the performers’ arms and occasionally their legs move with heightened animation. Only a few retain the flexibility of body that extends it further.

There are no birds, just recordings and then only of those that tweet and chirrup. The mesmeric, swooping, sweeping beauty of a murmuration in the soft light of sunset is reduced to that of automatons in the clinical glare of the discotheque, all throbbing lights and sternum-rattling, deafening sound.

The great Igor Moiseyev used the same type of arm movements extremely effectively, evoking the mechanisation of the 19th-century and the huge industrial surges in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Berrabah takes over the reins and is inventive within the limitations of the human ball and socket and hinge joints. Limited lighting highlights flesh tones, isolating the arms so that they appear to be coupling rods and pin ball machine flippers. There is a particularly effective moment when two dancers appear to create a kaleidoscope merely with their arms.

Dancers stack up like so many school boys in an end of term photograph then synchronise arm movements to create effects rather like the mass images created by hundreds of participants in parades in China, the brain tricking one into thinking that something has flipped downwards then back up again.

But, as impressively effective as arms can be, there is a limit to what they can do and, with a running time of around an hour, things do start to feel repetitive. The late addition of some leg movements and waving torches add little; in fact, they detract somewhat from the better bits.

The vestige of the emotional range of music played by multiple instruments producing complex, nuanced sound in orchestras is reduced to the thin whining of synthesisers and the thumping of drum beats, only a relentless rhythm remaining. Light is stark white or strobing, flashing white and red, with just a little respite with some blue here and there.

Worries about the effect of the tube strikes on theatre appeared to be confirmed if the number of empty seats was anything to go by. There were lots of late entries too, but well done for getting there.