The key thing to know about Wayne McGregor’s new show is that, although it was inspired by Jim Henson’s cult 1982 film The Dark Crystal, it is nothing like The Dark Crystal. There are no fantastical puppets here, no mythical worlds, no sweet elf-like creatures on a quest for a crystal, no obvious division between two sides, the wise and the cruel, goodies and baddies. So don’t come looking for that. But a picture of a world in peril, yes, that is here, a place with its elements dangerously out of balance on the verge of destruction. McGregor’s point is that this isn’t fantasy, this is our world.
Rather than the characterful protagonists that tell the film’s story, the always-impressive dancers from Company Wayne McGregor embody the natural elements: water (or melting icecaps), with bodies flowing snakily and mouths contorted in silent screams; earth, signified by beautifully twisting tree roots on their catsuits, the art-meets-avant-garde-fashion costumes designed by Philip Delamore and Alex Box; air, with celestial skies and a scene complete with staring eyeball, a nod to oracle Aughra from the film; and fire, in which the dancers wear wing-like lacy sleeves, raging through a forest that’s burnt to black.
We get direct words from young poet Isaiah Hull, listing the world’s ills: “The next generation pays the price,” he says in voiceover. And film designer Ravi Deepres provides arresting single images: an oil rig ablaze, a bird washed up on a beach, slowly swallowed by a thick black slick. Those images, allowed to linger, are arguably more effective than the dance. Their reality cuts through.
Sucked into the enveloping swell of Joel Cadbury’s ambient soundtrack, UniVerse seems to be in its own time zone – you have no idea how many minutes have passed. It’s like a meditation, a bleak but strangely powerful one. And an experiment in how to talk about environmental crisis without talking about it; working on the senses rather than storytelling, offering nature as its hero, and giving just the slightest possibility of hope. It’s a piece that is miles from its source material in many ways, but strangely original and unexpectedly impactful.
• At the Royal Opera House, London, until 4 June
