Last Updated on September 13, 2025
Sadeck Berrabah’s Synchronised Geometries
3.0 out of 5.0 stars
There is something undeniably arresting about bodies in perfectly synchronised movement, be it starlings in their thousands weaving ever-shifting shapes in the evening sky, in what’s become known as a murmuration, or perfectly drilled human beings creating their own murmuration and turning it into a theatre performance.
Murmuration Level 2, now at the Peacock Theatre, is the creation of the French multi-disciplinary artist Sadeck Berrabah, who’s choreographed for artists such as Shakira and the Black Eyed Peas, as well as for the Grammy Awards. Passionate about drawing, geometry and dancing, Berrabah, the founder of the group Géométrie Variable, fuses all three disciplines into a performance where 30 dancers grab your attention before, sadly, losing it, as the 75-minute show extends beyond its ability to hold an audience and keep it captive.
To be fair, though, the finale concentrates the mind beautifully and is well worth waiting for.
The show relies a lot on the sultry atmosphere created by Dimitri Vassiliu’s lighting design, its colours changing and becoming hazy as they blend with great quantities of smoke, directing the eye to different areas of the stage.
So, as the curtain rises, attention is directed to Berrabah kneeling in the central pool of light in an otherwise crepuscular stage. Birdsong runs through Trex’s soft sound score. Gradually, he begins to move, his own dance designed to animate the massed ranks of dancers just visible behind him.
Dressed in black with only their forearms visible and arranged in three rows, at first the whole movement is concentrated in their arms. Working from the elbow, stiff forearms and hands rise and fall and connect with each to create geometric shapes. Their coordination is hypnotic and all the more admirable because they are dancing to a kind of wall of sound disco music that offers no cues, nothing to lean on.
The movement, a blend of hip hop, martial arts and ballet – it becomes clear later in the show, as legs are added to the general movement, that all these performers are trained dancers – is what’s know in street parlance as “tutting” (think of the late 20th century craze for King Tut and the jerky, three-quarters profile dancing it inspired).
In the next section, they stand in a V-shape. The arm movements become more intricate, as they stretch and retract in canon, both sides of the V in perfect coordination.
Gradually, the groupings become more elaborate as does the movement. Heads are added. A chest-high wall appears upstage left, behind which three dancers interact. Later, it turns out the wall is made of cubes, and as it’s dismantled, new geometric shapes appear. Some of the dancers lie on their backs, and now the legs come into play – perfectly pointed feet, faultless coordination.
I first looked at my watch when I noticed my mind had begun to wander just after the half-hour mark. It turns out there’s only so much sameness you can take. My attention refocused at intervals throughout the rest of the show. I particularly liked the brief sequences where the dancers danced with their whole bodies in snatches of stylised hip hop, the whole thing building to a climax akin to a rave.
The finale was superb. Now the dancers, in black suits with white T-shirts, were given props: wide-brimmed hats and golden umbrellas, which they opened and closed to create a dazzling dance of gold.
Before that, the audience was called to do their bit by performing an arm choreography patiently directed by two dancers. In my experience, audiences love the chance, however brief, to be part of the show; and so it was with the crowd at the Peacock the night I went – from the youngest kid to the grandparents, they joined in with perhaps more gusto than skill, but still…
Murmuration Level 2 runs at the Peacock Theatre from 11/9 to 20/9
Peacock Theatre
Portugal Street
London WC2A 2HT
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