Biennale Danza 2026

Inspired by the theories of physicist Carlo Rovelli, Sir Wayne McGregor invites us to question our conception of time. Rather than linear and uniform, modern physics describes it as emerg­ing through relationships between events. Hence dance, which exists in time, becomes a privileged place to explore this complexity. In the body of dance, time bends, flows and stops, and each choreographic gesture carries with it traces of those that came before it, from every era, as if movement were preserved by a memory older than consciousness itself. McGregor’s reflections for the Biennale Dan­za 2026 explore these themes, intertwining science, philosophy and perception – begin­ning from the premise that past and present coexist in a body that remembers as it moves. The possibility of multiple states existing si­multaneously, a suggestion drawn directly from Rovelli, thus finds an extraordinary per­ceptual analogue in the arts of movement.

Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, President of La Biennale di Venezia

The artists of Biennale Danza 2026 are like our past dance time travellers who, in their own unique ways, explore and depict multiple timelines, perspectives and realities through their work. Instead of presenting time as line­ar – a sequence of past, present and future events – dance­making allows past and pres­ent to intertwine, offering audiences multiple interpretations of experience and changing how “narratives” are absorbed and under­stood. Fascinatingly, this approach mirrors the latest scientific principles of quantum superposition: the extraordinary ability for mul­tiple things to occupy the same space or to exist in all possible states simultaneously. Per­haps unknowingly, choreographers, dancers and audiences too have always been secret quantum experts.

Wayne McGregor, Artistic Director of the Dance Department

Texts taken from TIME DOES NOT EXIST, catalogue of the 20th International Festival of Contemporary Dance - La Biennale di Venezia 2026