Review: Last and First Men

©️Last and First Men, Photo by Miles Hart

Presented by Neon Dance, Last and First Men responds to Jóhann Jóhannsson’s final film, Last and First Men. Shot in 16mm black and white and released posthumously in 2020, the film draws on Last and First Men, the 1930 science fiction novel by Olaf Stapledon. It features narration by Tilda Swinton, with a script co-written by Jóhannsson and José Enrique Macián, and an orchestral score by Jóhannsson and Yair Elazar Gotman.

Choreographer Adrienne Hart places her movement language in direct conversation with the projected film, described as a film-inspired creation. The original footage fills the backdrop while three performers dance in front of it, accompanied by Swinton’s voice and the film’s score. Stapledon’s story imagines a distant future in which a last race of humans faces extinction, transmitting its message across two billion years to us, the “first men”. Jóhannsson’s camera lingers on vast Balkan monuments, rendering them alien and funereal. Humanity appears already fossilised, its memory fixed in stone.

Fukiko Takase, Aoi Nakamura and Kelvin Kilonzo respond with precise, spine-led choreography. They walk with a fixed stare, fold into deep squats, crawl close to the ground. Fingers articulate in coded gestures, as if attempting communication across time. The movement suggests evolution unfolding in fragments, the body shifting towards something altered and post-human.

Costume design by Mikio Sakabe and Ana Rajčević intensifies the sense of estrangement. Futuristic shoes, tight jumpsuits and sculptural objects, including a mask physically linking two performers and oversized bone-like forms, distort familiar outlines. The stage world becomes uncanny, echoing the film’s bleak, dystopian atmosphere.

The most striking image arrives near the end, when the dancers move closer to the projection and, under Nico de Rooij’s stark lighting, their silhouettes align with the monumental structures on screen. Flesh and stone momentarily coincide. It feels as if the human body is solidifying into architecture, extinction made visible.

For all its ambition, the production often plays as two complete works sharing the same space. Jóhannsson’s film carries immense visual and sonic weight; the choreography forms its own coherent study of evolutionary movement. The layering raises a pressing artistic question about necessity. What does the live body add to a film already so resolved in its vision? At its strongest, the stage presence anchors the cosmic scale in breath and muscle. At other points, the dialogue between mediums remains suggestive rather than fully realised.

★★★

For more information about this production, please visit: https://www.thecoronettheatre.com/whats-on/last-and-first-men/

Credits:

Created by: Neon Dance
Concept & Director: Adrienne Hart
Film: Jóhann Jóhannsson
Musical Director: Yair Elazar Glotman
Composers: Johann Jóhannsson & Yair Elazar Glotman
Choreographer: Adrienne Hart in collaboration with Fukiko Takase, Kelvin Kilonzo, Aoi Nakamura, Makiko Aoyama
Dance Performers: Fukiko Takase, Kelvin Kilonzo, Aoi Nakamura
Lighting Designer: Nico De Rooij
Costume Designer: Mikio Sakabe & Ana Rajcevic
Artefact Designer: Ana Rajcevic
Supported by: CTM Festival Berlin, Sadler’s Wells, Swindon Dance, Pavilion Dance South West
Funded by: Arts Council England