Olga Žitluhina

Olga Žitluhina is a Latvian dancer, choreographer and educator who helped shape contemporary dance in Latvia. Her Contact+ laboratory works with touch as a source of stories, memory, relation, movement material and shared composition.

Olga studied choreography in St. Petersburg and later completed a Master's degree in Choreography at the Latvian Academy of Music. In 1996 she founded the Olga Žitluhina Dance Company, widely described as Latvia's first professional contemporary dance company, and later became a central educator in the contemporary dance programme at the Latvian Academy of Culture.

She is also connected to Laiks Dejot, the international contemporary dance festival in Riga. Her Contact+ laboratory, Touching Stories, stays close to her long-term interest in composition, improvisation and the ways touch can become movement material, memory and shared story.