Tim Persent was born in South Africa in 1964. After graduating from Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance in 1986, he initially danced for Second Stride and Rambert Dance Company in London. From 1987 to 1994 he was a permanent member of the Rotterdamse Dansgroup. In the early 1990s he also worked with Ton Simons and the Brenda Daniels Dance Company in New York. In the Netherlands, he continued to perform in works by the choreographers Krisztina de Châtel, Paul Selwyn Norton, Michael Schumacher and Roland Shankula. From 1994 to 2018 he has been a dancer and artistic collaborator with the dance company LeineRoebana in Amsterdam.
Tim Persent received major Dutch arts awards for his dancing, the Silver Dance Prize in 1993, the Golden Swan in 2004 and the Merit Award from the Danish foundation Stichting Dansersfonds ’79 in 2024. To mark his 25th stage anniversary, he curated A Dance Concert at Holland Dance Festival in 2012, with works by Ton Simons, Richard Alston, LeineRoebana, Richard Alston and Ann van den Broeck.
Alongside his dance career, Tim Persent has worked for several cultural institutions in different capacities. He served as Artistic Director of the International Theaterschool Festival from 2005 to 2016 and is on the board of the KunstenDialoog Foundation. He has consulted the Dutch Arts Council and Performing Arts Fund, taught at CODARTS Dance Academy in Rotterdam and is the first certified MUNZ FLOOR and MUNZ BARRE coach in the Netherlands since 2019.
Tim Persent is member of the Dance On Ensemble since 2019 and performs in works by Merce Cunningham, Jan Martens, Christos Papadopoulos and Colette Sadler.