“Why Are We Here?”: Adrienne Hart on Bringing Last and First Men to the Stage

As Neon Dance opens its reimagining of Jóhann Jóhannsson’s Last and First Men in Bristol, Artistic Director Adrienne Hart reflects on extinction, memory and the future of the human body.

A haunting vision reborn

In 2018, the Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson died unexpectedly at the age of 48. Known for his Golden Globe-winning score for The Theory of Everything and Oscar-nominated work on Sicario and Arrival, Jóhannsson left behind one final project: Last and First Men. The 16mm black-and-white film, narrated by Tilda Swinton and inspired by Olaf Stapledon’s 1930s sci-fi novel, premiered posthumously in 2020. Now, in a new stage adaptation by Neon Dance, it becomes a live encounter that fuses film, dance, and music.

Opening at Bristol Beacon tonight, the production brings together three dancers, seven musicians, and Jóhannsson’s haunting footage of Yugoslavia’s “Spomenik” monuments to imagine a humanity two billion years in the future — a species both alien and recognisable, reaching back across time in a desperate attempt to communicate.

“It feels like we’re getting fewer and fewer chances to sit and contemplate the world around us,” says Neon Dance’s choreographer and director Adrienne Hart. “To question our existence, in and outside of pasts and futures. We rarely get to wonder, truly amble through the question, why are we here? This is a work for that.”

Weaving film, music and dance

Hart is no stranger to cross-disciplinary collaboration — previous works like Prehension Blooms (2022), which saw her choreographing robots, explored the porous boundaries between bodies and technology. But Last and First Men presented a different challenge: Jóhannsson’s film already existed, fully formed, years before she encountered it.

“I went back to the book Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon, which inspired the film, and that offered a lot of guidance,” Hart explains. She also drew on the director’s notes shared by Jóhannsson’s collaborators: “The fact that there are no humans present in the film, just many monuments… gave me the opportunity to imagine what the future humans from the story might be like, how they might move and interact with one another. The film became the perfect backdrop.”

That backdrop is more than passive. Through lighting, sound and movement, the dancers extend the imagery beyond the screen, at times framing the stage before yielding space back to the score and visuals. Hart describes the result not as a bombardment of steps, but as a “speculative feast” — a carefully balanced interplay between stillness and intensity.

Imagining the future body

To choreograph bodies that belong to a species millions of years ahead of us, Hart turned to long-time collaborator Ana Rajcevic. An artist and designer working at the intersection of art, science and technology, Rajcevic has created radical prosthetics and “body-extensions” that alter how performers move.

“Her ‘body-extensions’ physically restrict and alter the dancer’s way of moving,” says Hart, “and they definitely shaped the making process.” Japanese fashion designer Mikio Sakabe also contributed, his bulbous footwear subtly shifting the proportions of dancers’ bodies.

For Rajcevic, the project carried a deeply personal resonance. Jóhannsson’s film is dominated by Yugoslav war memorials: “The performance unfolds against Johann Jóhannsson’s haunting 16mm black-and-white film, featuring monumental stone sculptures — called the Spomenik — built during the communist era in the former Yugoslavia, where I was born. This very personal connection made the project even more meaningful for me, blending my country’s history, my own memories, and my work’s focus on future human evolution into one experience.”

Carrying Jóhannsson’s legacy

If Rajcevic anchored the project in memory and materiality, the production’s musical director Yair Elazar Glotman provided continuity with Jóhannsson’s world. A close collaborator of the late composer, Glotman completed the score after his death and has since built a career spanning film (Joker, All Quiet on the Western Front) and contemporary composition.

For Hart, working with him brought both reassurance and pressure: “Yair was my connection to Jóhannsson, so our conversations were really important to me and informed key decisions. I remember being really nervous the first time he watched the full show. Many of Jóhannsson’s collaborators were there that night… and I just held my breath!”

Though Hart never met Jóhannsson herself, she speaks of approaching the project with sensitivity rather than fear. “It wasn’t about putting a personal stamp on what we produced but sensitively adding to what Jóhannsson created and giving space when I felt what was pre-existing was already enough. There’s a pathos for me in this work — the mourning of a great artist as well as the mourning for humanity.”

Between stillness and gesture

One of the most striking aspects of Hart’s choreography is its restraint. She deliberately resisted constant movement, allowing silence and slowness to take centre stage.

“It’s a response to the timeline of the work and me trying to capture this feeling of the last humans reflecting on humanity as a whole,” she says. In some sequences, dancers embody personal memories donated during the making process: tracing the outline of a father’s hospital door, or miming the grip of an early love. “The audience won’t know these details but because the movement represents an event of great meaning to the performer, it still translates and I love that.”

Elsewhere, the dancers wear white mesh masks laced with hundreds of threads connecting them together — an image of the telepathic communication described in Stapledon’s novel. “They can’t see out of the piece, so they’re reliant on other senses to feel one another in the space and move as one.”

The omnipresent narrator

Threading through the work is the unmistakable voice of Tilda Swinton. Already the narrator of Jóhannsson’s film, her presence in the live performance is constant.

“Tilda’s voice is a constant throughout the work,” says Hart. “Her narration, delivered with icy precision, colours and shapes every movement, every gesture. She remains throughout as this omnipresent storyteller compelling us all to sit and listen.”

Swinton’s ethereal delivery, combined with Jóhannsson’s music and the stark imagery, reinforces the sense that this is not merely theatre but a meditation — a piece that asks its audience to confront mortality, memory, and possibility.

A meditation for global audiences

Following its Bristol opening, Last and First Men will embark on an international tour, with dates confirmed in Belgium and more to follow. Hart is clear about her hopes for audiences across different countries: “That within the grand scheme of things, we’re not that different, and that if we work together and in union with our environment we could achieve the impossible.”

In many ways, this vision of universality echoes Stapledon’s novel, which sought to trace the full arc of human civilisation, and Jóhannsson’s film, which found poetry in the ruins of monuments intended to defy time. Hart’s stage adaptation invites audiences not only to witness that vision but to inhabit it — to sit with its discomfort, its beauty, and its questions.

As Hart reflects: “We rarely get to wonder, truly amble through the question, why are we here? We hope this work offers some discomfort and some solace in this.”

Featured Image: Last and First Men Rewire 2024 – Neon Dance credit Parcifal Werkman Photography

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Last and First Men visits Dance City, Newcastle on 18 September and Bristol Beacon on 26 September 2025. Visit Dance City or Bristol Beacon.

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