Vanessa Abreu is a Union Dance Associate Artist and has recently received the title of Southbank Emerging Artist in Residence. After 12 years of ballet training, she studied in Lisbon’s Escola Superior de Dança and at Laban (BA & MA). Here she receives the Simone Michelle Award for outstanding achievement in Choreography. Professional engagements and collaborators include: Pair Dance, Tânia Bruguera, Pablo Bronstein, Noura Sanatian, Ejnar Askberger, Jane McLean, Dane Hurst and Andrej Gubanov.
Project Touch explores human interaction through the sense of touch—one of our most immediate forms of communication, intimacy and connection. Starting from an everyday experience often taken for granted, the work investigates the richness, complexity and vulnerability of physical contact between two friends, searching for what remains fundamentally human in our relationships with one another. Vanessa and Luke developed the project following their first collaboration while studying at Laban in London between 2003 and 2006. Through movement, proximity and shared physical experience, Project Touch unfolds as a study of trust, comfort and the subtle ways we communicate beyond words.