World Premiere

 is a duet about Arash and Emmalena, two dancers based in Vancouver who grew up far from here and far from each other. 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’.

Choreographers/Performers: Emmalena Fredriksson/Arash Khakpour

Excerpt from Work-in-Progress

Lumières de nuit (extrait) By François Cheng

La mort n’est point notre issue,
Car plus grand que nous
Est notre désir, lequel rejoint
Celui du Commencement,
Désir de Vie.

Gacela of the Remembrance of Love (Excerpt): by Federico Garcia Lorca

Sometimes the wind
Is a tulip of fear,
A sick tulip,
daybreak of winter.
A wall of difficult dreams
Divides me from the dead.

Created by: Serge Bennathan

Performers: Hilary Maxwell, Karissa Barry, Molly McDermott,

Josh Martin, Serge Bennathan

Composer: Bertrand Chénier