Murmuration Level 2 by Sadeck Berrabah

An engaging work from a showman who has wowed France with his precise take on what 30+ pairs of tightly syncopated arms can deliver…

Up close - a publicity shot for Sadeck Berrabah’s ‘Murmuration Level 2’. © Fabien Malot.

Sadeck Berrabah
Murmuration Level 2
★★★✰✰
London, Peacock Theatre
10 September 2025
instagram.com/sadeckwaff
www.sadlerswells.com
show runs through until Saturday 20 September 2025, book

We are absolute suckers for seeing things done with precision and unity. It pleases the eye and makes us wonder at the dexterity and cleverness we humans can muster. We see it all over, particularly in military displays, Olympic ceremonies, and in dance terms, you see it in the Rockettes and numerous Irish dance spectaculars like Riverdance. And ballet also, with its identical corps featured in classics like La Bayadère and Giselle. None of it is about individuals shining but about the anonymous group producing something bigger.

Over the last eight years, French artist Sadeck Berrabah has built a reputation for his crowd-pleasing and modern take on this dance precision, based around hip-hop excitement and particularly using elaborate, snappy arm movements — tutting. His two shows have toured widely in his homeland, and we are seeing the second on a first visit to London. The title picks up on the murmurations of birds and starlings in particular — see a video of their antics, and you remember it forever. Murmuration Level 2 certainly made a mark, if I’m not really sure it’s up there with what the starlings achieve.

Using 30 dancers (less than toured France I think), clothed simply in black t-shirts and trousers, the staging is anything but low-key, with a blitzkrieg of sophisticated lighting, smoke/haze, heavy beats, and often striking dungeon red colourways. Into this world enter the dancers’ bare forearms and hands, doing deceptively simple repeat movements that magically describe boxes and portals as if 19th-century mechanical automatons. When you first see it, you wonder at its snappy unison and the way the dancers never miss a beat. If but one of the 30 got it wrong, it would be a disaster, but they just don’t. Wow.

But, but, but, after 20 minutes of various plays, I was starting to get wise to the limited palette of movement. What’s wonderful about what the starlings do is the way they fold and vary their groupings — the movement ripples and shimmers — and although we see a little of that on stage, for the most part, it’s more about drilled regimentation. Berrabah, though, mixes up the pace, and at times we get slower, more intimate sections, with the soundtrack picking up on birdsong. We also get an ascending ladder of arm play where the first two dancers do clever movements with their four arms appearing almost independent of their bodies. Repeat and play with variations for three, then four and five dancers. We also get a section where the legs and ankles replace the semaphoring arms, and routines based around hats and umbrellas. All these are interesting variations, but the unified precision ultimately does begin to wear thin in the 75-minute show. The variations help, but the show’s trajectory is slowly but inexorably moving away from high excitement and engagement.

Interestingly, the blurb for the show says it mixes in hip-hop, martial arts, contemporary dance and ballet, but really its movement mostly feels limited to precise limb movements. Interestingly, the greatest applause came in the middle of the show, where the arms recede, the stadium rock approach is dialled to the max, and the dancers use their entire bodies to wow us — the extra movement dimensions really help.

Berrabah is a showman, and at the end, he comes out to thank everybody, gives a homily on what we can all achieve if we work together, and then teaches us some arm movements from the show. He’s an engaging teacher, and the audience laps it up and dutifully delivers, before all the dancers return for a final routine, cleverly spelling their thanks out in forearms and generating a standing ovation. Berrabah certainly knows how to catch your attention and work a crowd, and it will be interesting to see where he takes it next — certainly ‘Murmuration Level 3’ wouldn’t seem wise because he’s so well mined the approach already.