Exploring ESPE with Jen Wren

You are invited to feed into the development of this new performance work by attending this sharing with an opportunity to engage directly with the artist after the performance.

ESPE is an epic yet intimate interdisciplinary solo performance – the tale of a traveller forged from persecution, ancestry, and resilience.

Full off strength, rejection, humour, and hope ESPE’s tale questions, Are our doubts mere echoes of our inner demons, inherent traits, celestial alignments, or are they instead insidious seeds sown by others? What does it feel like to “fit in” and what happens when you stop trying?

ESPE is a contemporary dance performance, taking influence from cultural and artistic practices of Scottish, Cape Breton, Irish and Spanish traditions – as such is part of Jen’s ongoing practice for the last 11 years. ESPE tells her story through dance, song, text, crafts and music, exploring themes of identity, heritage, belonging, neurodiversity, bullying, creating a multi-layered experience for audiences.

The work is emerging through processes rooted in sharing work-in-progress with communities in different geographic and social contexts, intentionally located across both rural and urban settings to reflect Jen's ongoing interest in how dance is experienced differently depending on place, access and familiarity.

Whilst ESPE will be performed by Jen as a solo, the process of its creative evolution involves an array of specialist collaborators including:

Pat Kinevane - Co writer/Director
Rob Heaslip – Dramaturg/Rehearsal Director
Jenny MacKenzie – Cape Breton Step Dance
Susana Aguliar – Contemporary Flamenco
Calum MacCrimmon – Piobroch /Canterrach
Luke Sutherland –Instrumental and electronic music composition

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Host or Publisher Dance Base Scotland