Flight Pattern is a contemporary ballet choreographed by Crystal Pite, set to the first movement of Henryk Górecki's Symphony No.3.

[3][4][5] The dancers then move in canon, their spines extending and rotating to cause their heads to look back, then forward in a bow.

[10] The set then opens at the back of the stage, mimicking the entrance to a holding area in a migration centre or transportation .

The performers enter a doorway, but the weight of the jackets prevents the female dancer from joining them and she remains on the ground, shivering.

[2][3] The theme and music were selected approximately one and a half years before the first rehearsal and was the starting point for Pite's creative process.

[4][14][20] Jay Gower Taylor designed the sets,[20] with dark panels that open and close throughout the performance[12] and manipulate the shape of the stage.

The piece was performed as the first ballet of a triple bill that also consisted of The Human Seasons by David Dawson and After the Rain by Christopher Wheeldon.

[9] In its original run, Koen Kessels conducted the orchestra and Francesca Chiejina was a featured soloist for the music, singing soprano.

It was performed as the third act in a triple bill, succeeding the choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's Medusa and Wheeldon's Within the Golden Hour.

[28][29] While getting inspiration from conflicts from the past century, particularly the influx of refugees to Europe during the 2010s, it did not place its dancers in a specific time or location.

The uniformity of the grey costumes evoked a setting of a prison or battlefield, with the dancers under the control of a more powerful entity,[23] even though a specific antagonist is not named or explored in the narrative.

Narratives include looking for people in a queue, rocking a baby, and bodies left behind as the crowd moves to a new location.

[35] The emotions displayed in the piece are developed from the tension created by the story, movement quality, music, and spacing between the dancers.

Pite's choreography of the 36 dancers was described by Graham Watts in Bachtrack as "beautiful"[24] and Martha Schabas in The Globe and Mail as a "visually breathtaking work of art".

[4][8] Luke Jennings, writing for The Guardian, stated that Flight Pattern had an inquiry and feeling that was missing from the other, classical pieces.

[4] Kat Lister wrote in The Independent that the performance at Royal Opera House, a location considered a classical venue, made the piece more impactful to the audience.