Present Tense

Present Tense is a new multidisciplinary choreographic work that continues a long-term investigation into how the body can register, process, and translate the pressures of our present moment.

Driven by deeply embodied movement and a strong visual language, the work unfolds through surreal and atmospheric imagery that evokes visceral states of instability, suspension, and quiet existential threat. It invites audiences into an intimate, vicarious experience of physical performance, living within an uncertain future, where momentum, resistance, and fragility coexist in the body.

Present Tense completes a planned trilogy responding to climate change and political disconnection. It extends the integration of digital systems developed in Unfolding: motion capture and generative systems so the dancers’ movement feeds an evolving sound score and visual landscape — a feedback loop between body, data, and design.

Composer James Peter Brown and lighting designer and creative coder Fausto Brusamolino remain at the centre of that process. Together they construct environments that are not decorative but integral; spaces the body must physically and emotionally negotiate.