William Forsythe is a choreographer and dancer as well as an artist. The Fact of Matter asks us to embrace an unfamiliar set of actions, to devise unexpected solutions and find new ways to move together.

This is one of Forsythe’s choreographic objects, and is specifically designed to draw attention to the weight and movement of our bodies. A challenge is set out: to watch and learn from each other, to move with care, to play and test ourselves as we attempt to cross the field of suspended gymnasium rings.

The task is deceptive, as if it will be easy to climb or ‘swim’ through the air via the ‘cloud’ of rings. Children adapt to the task most naturally. Forsythe describes The Fact of Matter as ‘a conversation with gravity’, and explains it is ‘designed to give you an unadorned sense of three things: your weight, co-ordination and strength’.

While Forsythe did not conceive his work as a response to rising sea levels, he was open to its presentation in this context. Sea-level rises have now accelerated to five millimetres a year, with further rises of 40–80 centimetres forecast by the year 2100, depending upon how we act. We can always learn new ways to move — we are adaptable. Dance and movement, Forsythe notes, are ‘a way of thinking. The body is a thinking tool’.