Through their encounter they tell stories from the past to illuminate their possible imagined individual and collective futures. They entertain, inquire and provoke as they move through universal themes such as togetherness, aging and love to those more arrestingly contemporary such as our rapidly changing climates and migration. What is it that links this wild range of themes? Us. Through questions, answers and attempts to understand this moment in time, Arash and Emma bring humanness to the foreground in far reaching dances of seriousness and silliness, madness and hope.

Created by Arash Khakpour and Emmalena Fredriksson, YOU TOUCH ME explores contact and text improvisation in dance performance. The research began with a residency at Simon Fraser University in the summer of 2016, leading into a duet show called UNTITLEdISTANCE.

As Artists-in-Residence at the Dance Centre (Vancouver), Emmalena and Arash continued the research with 6 Vancouver-based bilingual dancers (Diego Romero, Natalie, Gan, Isabelle Kirouac, Juolin Lee, Dario Dinuzzi and Luciana D’Anunciacao) in the fall of 2019 and 2020, culminating on the show YOU TOUCH ME at the Farris Theatre on December, 2022.

More on Emmalena Fredriksson:
https://www.emmalenafredriksson.com/

Arash Khakpour:
http://www.bitingschool.com/