NOW is a hypnotic reminder that the present is never still—constantly shifting, fleeting, and alive.
To mark 25 years of groundbreaking dance-theatre, the Jasmin Vardimon Company revisited and reimagined its most powerful works, weaving them together into NOW—a performance that existed in a constantly shifting space between past, present, and future. In this liminal world, the stories that had defined Vardimon’s artistic journey came to life once more, reminding me that now is never fixed; it is an evolving, fluid moment, shared and reshaped in real time.
Rather than feeling like a retrospective, NOW was an act of reinvention, where past works were not simply revived but transformed and recontextualised. The set itself became both a canvas and a performer, shifting as dancers manipulated the space. At the heart of this world lay the rope—a visual and physical through-line, a narrative umbilical cord connecting moments, bodies, and emotions. It acted as a timeline, a dividing surface in a two-dimensional world, while behind it, projections expanded into a three-dimensional space—a world beyond the now, perhaps the subconscious, perhaps the future waiting to unfold. Watching this layering play with my perception of time and space was fascinating, constantly pulling me between what was real and what was imagined.
The choreography was breathtaking, an interplay of raw physical skill, expressive storytelling, and haunting imagery. Dancers contorted, collided, and embraced with an intensity that made every movement feel urgent and necessary. The music drove their bodies through a spectrum of emotions, from violent and unrelenting to tender and intimate. The physicality of the dancers was astonishing—they threw themselves into the movement with total commitment. Evelyn Hart, Risa Maki, and Sean Moss moved at times with mechanical precision, at others with wild, unpredictable fluidity. Their presence was magnetic; I couldn’t look away.
Some of the stories unfolded with brutality, projected onto barbed-wire imagery, where bodies twisted in struggle, evoking themes of conflict, oppression, and resistance. Others immersed me in pure love, with animated hearts beating across dancers’ chests, making me feel the shared presence of the now between two souls. In every moment, the human experience was laid bare, from the euphoria of passion to the anxiety of an uncertain future—an odyssey of emotions playing out before us.
Lighting, projections, and set design merged seamlessly, creating a world that felt both dreamlike and hyper-real. The visual artistry was just as crucial as the movement itself, expanding the stage beyond its physical limits. At times, the space felt infinite, at others, claustrophobic. Every shift in light, sound, and shadow pulled me deeper into the emotional frenzy of the piece.
With NOW, the Jasmin Vardimon Company reminded me that dance is more than movement—it is a living, breathing act of storytelling. This wasn’t just a celebration of the past 25 years; it was a meditation on the nature of time itself, on how we exist in a present that is never still, a moment that is both fleeting and eternal. It was a testament to the power of live performance, a space where past and future dissolved, leaving only the raw intensity of the now.