Choreographer Ugo Dehaes has been making dance with robots for several years, exploring how things can move like dancers. For Soft Tissue, he turns to a new generation of robots: soft robots, which no longer have a hard core and motors, but are made entirely of soft materials. These robots are vulnerable, yet surprisingly strong thanks to their resilience and flexibility.

They respond differently from traditional robots, which are designed to execute exactly what is asked of them. And this brings Ugo to a more human question: how much vulnerability and room for error do you need to set something in motion, and to move an audience?

As a choreographer, Ugo works constantly with bodies. This requires not only technical knowledge, but also trust, encouragement and a good sense of people. As an introvert, he once thought it would be easier to work with robots: they have no doubts and simply do what you tell them. But the soft robots make this neat opposition between human and machine considerably more complicated: they seem so vulnerable. The longer Ugo rehearses with them, the more he finds himself treating them like flesh-and-blood people. And before he knows it, he wonders whether he isn't once again working with dancers full of feelings.

As an audience member, you sit around a large table with Ugo and come literally close to the work. You can touch and control the robots. Pumps and organic controllers create a playful form of shared choreography. The music by Wannes Deneer also starts from the materiality of the performance. Soft materials such as felt, latex and silicone are explored as sound materials, while air pressure and mechanical systems not only make the robots move, but can also produce sound. This creates a sonic world that, like the robots, exists somewhere between the mechanical and the organic.

Soft Tissue is a funny and intimate performance about robots and bodies, vulnerability and resilience, and physical contact in a society where touch and proximity are increasingly being replaced by screens and technology. The performance builds on the international success of Simple Machines and Moving Skin, once again searching for ways to make things, people and technology move together.Premiere in autumn 2027.