Emma Jayne Park | Something Will Happen | Residency Sharing

Fallow responds to John Berger's observations of the working classes as being 'effortlessly at home in labour'.

What began as an urge to dig holes and lie in them - imagining the relationship between soil and skin could nourish a compromised body - later expanded into an understanding that it was not just the land and laying but the digging that created true rest: stilling the mind and the body through exertion.

The research exists as a series of movement scores/ rituals/ manual labour where soil is moved, exploring an inherited physical need for endurance and exertion. It is politically concerned with the 21st century framing of rest as luxurious and the expanding capitalisation of this - distancing people from the need of their body and distracting from what real rest could look like. This residency seeks to question the potential of the research and scores as performance material, whilst furthering questions around reclaiming the commons, our bodies and time through undertaking generative movement without productive intent.

Emma will host this informal sharing of this work on the final day of the residency, format and content to be decided in response to the residency.

Emma/Emma Jayne/EJ has been called a dancer, theatre-maker, collaborator, facilitator, movement director, dramaturg, intimacy co-ordinator, activist, organiser, and occasional drag king. They’re not fussed about definitions. They research, think, make, and do things - preferably in collaboration.

Their work is a series of overlapping explorations of failure, belonging, intimacy, and euphoria. It always begins in the body but manifests in various forms that are generally hyper-contextual and process-led: intimate/ durational/ site responsive performance, long form writing, visual scribing, cartography, facilitating conversation spaces, digging holes, and hosting chaotic dance parties.

From a rural, working class background Emma did not grow up with any connection to the creative industries, this has led to a non-linear career path and the development of a broad skill set which can be summarised as supporting people, doing what needs to be done to make things happen and questioning inherited status quos.

They are now (re)emerging with a clearer strategic understanding of their practice and how to survive the industry without becoming it. In this, their work continues to focus on liveness, hyper contextual performance, process and collaboration. Their time is roughly spent undertaking activism, facilitation/ artist support, critical thinking and making live performance.

Supported through Dance Base’s Paid Artist Residency Programme

Host or Publisher Dance Base Scotland