As we previously announced on Too Much Love, Miami-based artist and futurist Natasha Tsakos is preparing to launch her most ambitious project yet: PARABOLES, a live performance created for microgravity. Set to premiere in 2026, the piece blends choreography, technology, science, and storytelling, pushing the limits of what performance can look and feel like in space.
Tsakos has long been at the forefront of experimental theater, creating work for the Super Bowl, Cirque du Soleil, the G20 Summit, and Tribeca Film Festival, and speaking at global platforms including TED, Google, and the United Nations. Behind the scenes, she’s spent years training with NASA-affiliated programs, completing the New Space Economy program at MIT, and studying at the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences. With PARABOLES, she brings two decades of dreaming, and rigorous preparation, into orbit.
What was the initial spark for PARABOLES? Was there a moment or realization that made you feel art in microgravity was not only possible, but necessary?
I’ve been dreaming of creating shows for space for as long as I’ve been creating work. After taking the New Space Economy program at MIT, it became crystal clear: we are going to space. It’s no longer a question of if, but how, and why.
Yes, the new space economy is still largely about satellites, data, infrastructure. Yes, space tourism is nascent and elite right now. But so was aviation. So was the Internet. Technology always gets better, smaller, faster. Breakthroughs happen. What’s out of reach today will become someone’s honeymoon, soon.
So what will we experience as we balloon through the stratosphere, orbit our planet, or travel to Mars?
The space age is booming across sectors. But where are the artists? What stories will we take with us? What experiences will we imagine? What new physics of feeling will emerge?
With PARABOLES, I didn’t want to impose a fixed narrative. I wanted the environment, the research, the training to shape the piece. To let this new medium inform the form. Create a space where we can float, fall, and find meaning. The most obvious tension, between holding on and letting go, became the theme.
In microgravity, everything is amplified. The mundane becomes magical. Imagine a cooking scene timed to tango: sauces swirling like nebulae, spaghetti streaming midair, plates passed like frisbees. Or imagine simply… letting go.
You’ve described this as a “moonshot” twenty years in the making. What were the biggest obstacles, creative, technical, or institutional, you’ve had to overcome to get here?
On bad days, they’re obstacles. On good days, puzzles.
Funding. Convincing people this is real (though once they see my body of work, it’s not such a stretch). Designing our human-readiness training to prepare our minds and bodies for flight. Assembling the right team. Building a culture rooted in play and precision.
Every part has been a system to hack, a structure to rethink. I’m wired for that.
And I couldn’t do this alone. I’m lucky to be surrounded by an extraordinary team of artists, scientists, filmmakers, advisors, and cultural partners. And our backers: our Patronauts, Stajets, and Startracers. Dreamers and doers who believe in the improbable.
We’re building something bigger than any of us could do on our own. That’s the beauty of it.
Can we give them a shoutout!?
Our team: Luis Alberto Cuevas, Gabija Birina, Enrique Villacreses, Dezi Marino, Octavio Campos, Yvette Gonzalez.
Our advisors: Henryk Dabrowski, Theo Edmonds, Mike Staz, Jonathan Satchel, Vivian Marthell, Tanya Bravo, Kathryn Garcia, and Beth Boone.
Our Propulsive Partners: Zero-G, MIT Space Exploration Initiative, O Cinema, Live Arts Miami, Creativity America, Capsule Media, Miami Light Project, ORBES, Orbital Exploration Systems, Jorge Parra, Creative Creative, The Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces (CRCI), and my dentist Dr. Gonzalez with All Smiles Dentistry, who saved the day. Long story.
PARABOLES isn’t just a performance. It’s a research project, a film, and an immersive installation. How did you approach shaping a work that exists across so many formats and mediums?
It evolved. Knowing the live performance would be captured digitally, the art film was a natural fit. Expanding the art film into an immersive installation, inviting audiences to feel the gravity of weightlessness, was irresistible. Then came the scientific collaboration, which took everything to another level.
I’m incredibly grateful to Yvette Gonzalez, whose work at the intersection of space, science, and community resilience helped me ground some of these interdisciplinary collaborations with intention and impact.
From the beginning, I’ve gravitated toward working with people outside my discipline: neuroscientists, engineers, researchers.
My first multimedia show involved a Dream Museum, where we recorded my brain waves and heart activity as I reenacted the performance mentally, mapping that data to the dramaturgy. A theatrical investigation into mirror neurons.
So weaving scientific inquiry into art feels organic to me.
You’re working with scientists, cinematographers, choreographers, and aerospace experts. What has surprised you most about the cross-disciplinary collaboration?
How human it all is.
We tend to silo expertise and get caught up in the tagging and labeling of disciplines, but at the core, we’re all curious creatures chasing question marks. The diversity of perspectives creates this beautiful super-prism. Everyone tackles the same idea from a different angle. It’s electrifying.
Microgravity fundamentally changes how the body moves. How did that challenge or expand your ideas about choreography and performance?
It’s a dream state, revealing new metaphors, new poetics of the body and composition.
The challenge becomes, how do you harness that surprise? How do you sequence awe?
Like a magician, I want to design dramaturgical arcs that feel like discovering a whole new world inside. Like stepping into someone else’s dream mid-flight.
You’ve said this isn’t a stunt but a “profound reimagining of form.” What responsibilities do you think artists have when exploring something as symbolically charged as space?
I can’t speak for all artists. But I believe we should start with more questions than answers.
Let’s not copy-paste existing forms or narrative structures in orbit. Space is the new medium. Let’s let the medium inspire new art forms. Let’s let the physiological, psychological, and scientific needs inspire new art forms.
Let’s start with exploration.
The project also includes biometric research. What role does the body, as both subject and sensor, play in your artistic practice?
My body is my laboratory. My compass. My state.
On days I’m disconnected from it, the work suffers. When I’m attuned, it becomes a tuning fork. Everything starts there.
There’s a growing conversation about who gets to shape the cultural narrative around space. What would you say to the space industry about why artists matter in that conversation?
I would tell them to watch my latest TEDx talk :)
Works of art stimulate the theater of our imaginations. Because we understand through rhythm, we dream in visions, we emote with movement. We process through sensory perception. Art shocks us out of automatic. It evokes memory, ignites imagination. Art gives us mirrors and metaphors. Art inspires the transcendent.
As the space industry accelerates, we risk building a future that’s functional, but not fully vibrant. Without the rhythms and heartbeats of humanity.
Think about it. As we embark on long-duration space missions, with extended periods of isolation and confinement, what will we experience beyond the science, the initial thrill, and the blackout of space?
Music. Movement. Literature. Theater.
Culture.
Experiences that inspire us to aspire further.
You’ve done TED talks, been a speaker at the UN, Google, and now you're aiming for orbit. What has this journey taught you about the role of imagination in shaping reality?
Everything around us was imagined first. The satellite, the street, the screen you’re reading this on. Imagination is our blueprint.
Our duty is to imagine boldly and responsibly.
PARABOLES premieres in 2026. What do you hope audiences will feel, or question, after experiencing it?
I hope it uplifts. Awakens. And inspires.
We need hopeful reimaginings right now. I want audiences to leave with a renewed sense of wonder for what’s possible. On this planet. And beyond.
