Dance Duo Jess and Morgs Confront the Politics of Deepfakes in New Work

Award-winning dance duo Jessica Wright and Morgann Runacre-Temple, known as Jess and Morgs, have created a new work titled Deepfake that explores the theatricality — and unease — of high-stakes television interviews in an era of AI-generated fabrication, according to a review in The Guardian.

The piece, staged in an east London dance studio, combines virtuosic movement with green-screen techniques to depict a scene in which a politician is confronted by a fabricated allegation, illustrating how difficult it can be to distinguish fact from fabrication.

"We've always been drawn to where there's a crossover between the theme and the form," Runacre-Temple said, describing the pair's approach to blending contemporary dance with technology-driven storytelling.

Jess and Morgs previously scored a major success with their 2022 production Coppélia, made for Scottish Ballet, which reimagined the classic 19th-century ballet about a dancing doll as a cautionary tale about AI automatons. Earlier this year, the duo made their debut at the Paris Opera Ballet.

Deepfake continues the pair's pattern of using ambitious film and live camera work to reflect on contemporary technological anxieties, with the new piece addressing how deepfake technology can erode trust in recorded evidence and public statements.