We Should Have Never Walked on the Moon at Southbank Centre

4^th September 2025

Ronan Fawsitt

Ronan Fawsitt

4 September 2025

British dance troupe Rambert takes over Southbank’s Royal Festival Hall in a co-production with Ballet national de Marseille, with the UK premiere of We Should Have Never Walked on the Moon.

Undoubtedly ambitious in it’s production, We Should Have Never Walked on the Moon is brought together under the direction of of French contemporary dance collective (LA)Horde who invite you to explore a transformed Southbank Centre in a sprawling installation of interpretative performance, cinema and a host of rave dance that is designed to be free-flowing display, with the audience granted the freedom to move from room to room, from live DJ driven and “hakken” styled dance routines within the hazy foyer of the Royal Festival Hall to the more intimate rooms where you skate the periphery mere feet away from the performers. At times you may stumble upon a solo ballet scene in the middle of a hallway, or you may find yourself passing a more muted performer channelling their inner The Man Who Fell From Earth David Bowie by manning a mobile wall of smartphones, or you may find yourself trapped in an empty room on a group zoom call – it’s eccentric, quirky, and utterly enthralling.

A particularly thought-provoking exhibition invites you onto the stage of the Royal Festival Hall’s auditorium, where, from the main stage, you view a scene of performance artists enacting a baptism between the aisles where you would ordinarily expect to be seated. The lights dim, an organ plays from above, and a screen lights up with a scene of a pristine lake where another baptism takes place – this quickly transitions to the aftermath of a Glastonbury-esque music festival where the earth is littered with vape pens, crushed cans and leaking bottles of fizzy cola. It’s a metaphor that’s been exploited a thousand times before, but with the shifting dynamic of the viewer being brought upon the stage under the wavering house lights, you can’t help but find yourself looking introspectively and be reminded of the banality of your own Earth-polluting consumption.

It’s a brilliant and unique construct from (La)Horde that at its best twists your perceptions and allows for each attendee to, in a way, play a part in the design of each nightly performance in a such a style that, with their maximalist utilisation of the facilities of the Southbank Centre, from the main stages to the buildings terraced exterior, (La)Horde can all but guarantee no two viewers leave with the same lived experience.

We Should Have Never Walked on the Moon is a captivating performance from the collaborative forces of the Ballet National De Marseille and British dance company Rambert that seeks to compel its viewers into becoming active participants in a multi-sensory, explorative and entirely triumphant production that tackles class, the human body and life in a post-internet world. A must-see.

Ronan Fawsitt
Photo: Courtesy of Southbank Centre

We Should Have Never Walked on the Moon is at Southbank Centre from 3^rd until 6^th September 2025. For further information or to book, visit the theatre’s website here.