Tim Persent was born in South Africa in 1964 and has been a dancer and artistic collaborator with the dance company LeineRoebana in Amsterdam since 1994.

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.

Tim Persent received two important Dutch arts awards for his dancing, the Silver Dance Prize in 1993 and the Golden Swan in 2004. When he celebrated 25 years on the stage in 2012, he presented “A Dance Concert” at Holland Dance Festival in The Hague, featuring choreographies by Ton Simons, LeineRoebana, Richard Alston and Ann van den Broeck.

Parallel to his dance career, Tim Persent has worked for several cultural institutions in different capacities. From 2005 to 2016 he was Artistic Director of the International Theaterschool Festival (IST) in Amsterdam. He remains on the board of directors of the dance collective MAN II O and the KunstenDialoog Foundation. He has also consulted for the Dutch Arts Council and the Dutch Performing Arts Fund. Since 2017 Tim Persent is teaching at CODARTS Dance Academy in Rotterdam and since March 2019 he is the first certified MUNZ FLOOR and MUNZ BARRE coach in the Netherlands.

Jone San Martin, born in Donostia/San Sebastian, Spain, in 1966, studied dance with Mentxu Medel at the Institut del Teatre in Barcelona and at Mudra International in Brussels. She was a dancer at the Ballet Nacional de España, at Ulmer Theater, with Jacopo Godani in Brussels and at the Ballet Royal de Wallonie in Charleroi. She joined Ballett Frankfurt in 1992 and was a dancer at The Forsythe Company from 2005 to 2015.

Since 2000, she has choreographed many of her own works. She was a guest at the Avignon Festival in 2004 where she performed the solo “Tourlourou”, created for her by Carlotta Sagna, as part of the ‘Sujets à Vif’ series. In 2006, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Asociación de Profesionales de Danza de Gipuzkoa. Since 2014, she is Associated Artist of Dantzaz Kompainia in Donostia. She curated the Performing Arts Programme for DDSS16 (Donostia/San Sebastian Cultural City in Europe 2016). Jone has been a member of the Dance On Ensemble since 2015.

Marco Volta, born in Turin in Italy in 1969, studied dance at “Lo Studio” Dance School Bussoleno, Italy. He has been dancing for several theatres and independent dance companies in Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Ireland since 1994, among them Balletto Teatro di Torino, Tanztheater Wien, Theater Freiburg and Cois Ceim Dance Theatre.

Marco Volta has always been fascinated by the fusion of different dance styles that have led him to collaborate with flamenco and urban dance artists. As a choreographer he has created several works that have been presented in Seoul, New York, Turin and Basel, among other places. He is currently contributing to a long-term research project on the subject of “rehearsal as performance”, both as a dancer and a choreographer.

Aside from his dancing, Marco Volta has a teaching practice at several academies, theatres and training institutions for professional dancers. He is currently Lecturer at the Zurich University of the Arts, Bachelor of Arts in Contemporary Dance and Higher Education for Contemporary and Urban Stage Dance. He also works with children and teenagers, for example with the miniMIR Education Dance Program and the Young Ensemble Hermesdance. In 2015 he obtained a Diploma of Advanced Studies in Dance Culture at the University Bern.

Lia Witjes Poole was born in 1979 in Ontario, Canada where she began her dance training. She received her formal education at Arts Umbrella in Vancouver, British Colombia. While in their Youth Dance Company, she danced with renowned Canadian choreographers such as Joe Laughlin, Gioconda Barbuto and Wen Wei Wang.

Lia Witjes Poole started her professional career in Toronto as a company member of Desroisiers Dance Theatre. In the Netherlands, she has performed as an independent artist with such choreographers as Pieter de Ruiter, Jennifer Hanna, Itzik Galili, Omar Rajeh and Heather Ware, and has also made two dance films with Ivar Hagendoorn. In 2002, Lia became a regular artist with the acclaimed Dutch dance company LeineRoebana.

After the birth of her two daughters, she has taught ballet and contemporary dance at the Amsterdam Academie voor Theater en Dans, The Dutch National Ballet Academy, Codarts in Rotterdam and has come full circle to Canada where she has been developing an international educational exchange between Arts Umbrella and the Dutch dance institutions. Lia Witjes Poole joined the Dance On Ensemble in January 2019, performing in Rabih Mroué’s piece, Water between three hands.