Peripheral Futures

Dance works based on sonification of DNA from HST oak trees — where non-human identity, human voice, and embodied interpretation meet.

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What this Overlap is about

Peripheral Futures is a multi-season Overlap within the Highly Sensitive Tree project, bringing together DNA sonification, and embodied choreography.

We invite contemporary dance studios, companies, and collectives to participate in the 2026 season of Peripheral Futures — a programme exploring how peripheral people and peripheral trees sense and respond to uncertain futures and carry their identity forwards into those futures.

How it Works

Peripheral Futures begins with a precise technical – creative act: oak DNA is sonified (translated into sound) to create a shared, non-musical signal derived from biological structure.

Using that, participating dance groups are invited to:

Consider the oak’s identity (the raw DNA sonification), identify patterns, define features and characteristics, listen to what the oak is;
Embody that identity in themselves and portray what it means to hold that identity in a peripheral space, facing an unknown (and perhaps vulnerable) future;
Optionally mediate, amplify or enhance that identity through locally relevant music and/or spoken text fragments, making visible how different cultures filter and re-voice the same non-human pattern.

The works created form a comparative study archive of embodied listening and cultural mediation. And collectively, they form a season-long inquiry into how the future is felt from the edge and how we – the trees and humans – might carry our identity into the future.

Creative Commponents

Each Peripheral Futures dance work can include five elements:

DNA Sonification
A provided sonic translation of oak tree DNA, used as rhythm, texture, or structural score.
Voice fragments
Recorded voices from local community members, woven into the performance as narrative, atmosphere, or fragment.
Visual effects
Freely chosen by the studio — projection, light, costume, spatial design,
Musical elements
Local or culturally relevant mediation of the base DNA sonification
Dance Choreography
An embodied response integrating the above elements into a coherent movement work.

Works may be performed live by participants. Submission format: max 10 minute video.

Open Calls

The Peripheral Futures Overlap is currently open for expression of interest from dance studios and choreographers working with embodied practice — approaches where movement is shaped by sensation, listening, and lived experience.

Selected participating studios will be invited to develop choreographic responses to sonified DNA material we'll provide, taken from Highly Sensitive Tree oak trees.

Are you a dance studio interested in joining this collaborative Overlap? Reach out to us and we'll gladly share more details.