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.