Emma Jayne Park
Dancer, Theatre Maker, Collaborator, Facilitator

Based in Scotland.

emma@somekindofchaos.works
+44 (0) 781 685 2315

Emma has been called a dancer, theatre-maker, collaborator, facilitator, movement director, dramaturg, intimacy co-ordinator, advocate, activist, leader and occasional drag king. They're not fussed about titles, instead they focus on interrupting conventional/ inherited expectations and using physicality as a tool for closing the gap between ideologies and everyday actions.

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; including site-responsive, intimate and durational performance, curated conversation spaces, cartography, geocaching, strategic consultation and cultural policy, international cultural relations, and creating chaotic community dance parties.

Working under the moniker Some Kind of Chaos, Emma has worked locally, nationally and internationally from a base in rural Scotland for the past fifteen years. They are currently a recent recipient of the Magnetic North Seed Fund and the Working Class Artists Commission, through a process designed and awarded by artists for artists.

They ask questions and are obsessed with asking better questions.
You can usually find them in the sea, drinking tea or dancing in sweaty clubs - often whilst simultaneously scrolling Twitter.

 

2023-2025 Statement of Intent


Hyper-contextual practice
Emma is driven by creating interactions which are short lived, cannot be repeated in their exact form, and are heavily reliant on the specific context at the time. This can often include asking for the active participation of audiences and working with performers who are comfortable asking questions about intimacy in platonic and community spaces. Most of this work evolves as a series of offerings, or long term interactions that act as a foundation for trust building. Some examples of this work are shared below. Emma’s focus will be on reinvesting in this practice over the next two years and better understanding how to sustain this work, which currently sits outwith the objectives of touring subsidy. They will also be (re)establishing their practice as a movement artist who is still understanding what it means to work with their disabled body, through research project Fallow.

Bridging the gap between formalised leadership roles and grassroots working
As an initiator, Emma has explored the concept of leadership for over a decade and believe they could offer support to the sector by developing a role that bridges the gap between formalised leadership positions and grassroots working. Emma has no intention to apply to or undertake a formal leadership position, but would like to use their facilitation skills to work alongside those who work within organisational frameworks to realise their civic and sector focussed ambitions. They believe this role could offer an input/ output that is more agile, responsive and political than current understandings of leadership in the industry. They also believe that the development of such a role could create opportunities to redistribute power in the sector, ensuring that artists can undertake leadership without having to move away from their choreographic practice.

Investing in long term collaborative relationships
Having been distracted by survival for the duration of their career, and often over extending themselves, Emma is now focussed on developing extremely deep and intentional relationships with a small number of collaborators - whilst feeding those relationships with other interactions. These relationships may evolve through formal working, or simply through supporting their work. These collaborators include Colette Dalal Tchantcho, Dance Base, Eoin McKenzie, Gillie Kleiman, Jo Matthews, The Global Cultural Relations Platform, IETM, Jordan and Skinner, Magnetic North, Scottish Dance Theatre, The Work Room, and Yaraqa (Beirut, Lebanon).

Culture beyond ‘the arts’
Having returned to Gretna from 2019-2023 to live with family, Emma has became acutely aware of the narrow lens through which many who lead the cultural sector view society, and the bubble that the sector exists within. They are eager to reject acceptance into this bubble as a form of validation and to develop relationships with cultural activities beyond those interested in the arts as a bridge between experiences, and to ensure that their understanding and assumptions of the world is ever-changing and challenged regularly. This extends into their work as a Trade Unions and their collaborations in International Cultural Relations, through the EU Commission, which also explore the politics of violence, political infrastructure and systems of power in a global context.

Work-life balance
Emma is a dedicated campaigner for the four day work week, universal basic income, and is invested in the Scottish Governement’s Fair Work Action Plan. They believe that everyone is entitled to participate in, enjoy, and create art, and that the key route to ensuring this is to ensure that people live lives which give space to do so. As a previously chronic over worker, they are currently re-shaping their working processes to embody a healthier balance between work and life, whilst advocating strongly for this in any role they undertake.

  • #TheSoloFilter (Image Sid Scott)

  • Audiences are invited to remake a performance into the piece they wish they had seen as an offering to counter Liz Lerman's Critical Response process which dominated Q&A sessions at the time. Supported by the choreographic futures fund and presented at Dance Live '15, Cardiff dance platform and Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

  • Living Room Performances (Image self timed)

  • Exploring the redesign of theatre and dance so that it could tour to the living rooms of people who are immunocompromised or living with anxiety disorders, meaning that they literally cannot attend art In public spaces. The process focusses on safeguarding the interaction from arrival to exit, touring to over 38 homes in 2016/17.

  • Fallow (Image Jassy Earl)

  • A practice for living, fallow attempts to embody and share agricultural theories of resting the land (using the body as a landscape) through a series of small interventions, video installations and curated conversations. the work is underpinned by reading and writing that explores the impact of scarcity on the body and behaviour.

  • Atlas Pandemica (Design EJP and Alan Cameron)

  • Interviews with residents of Dumfries and Galloway, aged 8-83, focussed on their understanding of the distribution of power In the region and their hopes for community empowerment In the future generated this map, a dance score which is then recreated in life size so people can physically experience the systems they discussed.

  • Preparing To Die... (Image Mike Chalmers)

  • An autobiographical dance theatre performance that explores death, suicidal ideation and a persons relationship to objects, in a set created from the belongings they no longer need. The performance will run until all of the objects in the space have been taken by audiences. supported by the Magnetic North Seed Fund.

Associate Artist:
Present: The Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival.
2020: Scottish Dance Theatre supported by Surf the Wave Seed Generator
2016: DX Choreography Award Holder, Dance X Change Birmingham.
2014: Platform Theatre, Glasgow.

Training - Qualifications:
2007: First Class BA Hons (Dance) - Edinburgh’s CPDT
2007: Simonson Technique Internship - DNA Manhattan, NYC.
2008: Apprenticeship - Company Chordelia, Glasgow.
2019: Intimacy Coordinator Level One Training with Ita O’Brien (Intimacy On Set)

‘with explosive dance sequences by Emma Jayne Park that range from the slightly intrusive to the absolutely brilliant’
Joyce MacMilllan on Monstrous Bodies

Theatre Credits (Movement Direction/ Dramaturgy):

2023: Meeting of Two Strangers, Bassam About Diab/ Kathryn Spence
2023: Dreamer, Colette Dalal Tchantcho (Shubbak Festival)
2022: The Time Machine, Jordan and Skinner
2022: And Then Come The Nightjars, Wonderfools
2021: And Though This Be Madness, Skye Loneragan
2020: Mrs Puntila and Her Man Matti, Royal Lyceum Theatre and DOT Theatre.
2020: Donny’s Brain, Traverse Theatre
2019: The Mistress Contract, Tron Theatre
2019: Dreamers, Colette Dalal Tchantcho
2018: Twelfth Night, Royal Lyceum Theatre & Bristol Old Vic
2018: Lullaby, Anna Newell and Theatre Hullbaloo
2018: Tetradecathlon, Showroom Productions
2017: Arabian Nights, Royal Lyceum Theatre
2017: Monstrous Bodies, Dundee Rep Theatre
2017: A Winter’s Tale, Royal Lyceum Theatre
2014: 44 Stories,The Arches

Performance Credits:
Two Destination Language, Tortoise In A Nutshell, Pearlfisher, Curious Seed, Conflux/ Lume Theatre/ Legs On The Wall, Gary Clarke, Ocean All Over, Norman Douglas/ Angus Balbernie, Edinburgh International Festival L’Orfeo directed by Gilbert Deflo.

'uncomfortable, funny and moving, with a truthful core that transcends any possible accusation of self-indulgence'
Donald Hutera on It’s Not Over Yet...

Performance, Choreography and Expanded Practice (Created under Some Kind of Chaos):
Present: Fallow (Creative Scotland, Working Class Artists, Scottish Dance Theatre)
Present: Preparing To Die (Magnetic North and Surge)
Present: Epic Fail (Imaginate Accelerator Programme and Tramway Supports)
2021: And Then We Unravel, Again
2016: Experts In Short Trousers
2014: Thinking In The First Person
2014: #Trans
2013: Status Anxiety

Commissions:
2022: Preparing To Die, Magnetic North. Development of a new autobiographical dance theatre performance.
2022: Soil, Silt, Clay. Commissioned by Working Class Artists Group.
2021: Gathering - a conversational residency, commissioned by the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival.
2020: Walking - Seeing - Wonder, commissioned by Edinburgh International Festival.
2020: Atlas Pandemica, commissioned by The Stove.
2019: The Invitation, a collaboration with Thomas Schaupp commissioned by The Work Room.
2017: Here Before Now, created in collaboration Nik Paget-Tomlinson, commissioned by The BENCH.
(Living Room Performances for people with immunodeficiency or mental health conditions.)
2017: It’s Not Over Yet, commissioned by The BENCH.
2017: First Thought, Best Thought, commissioned by Dance Base.

International Practice:
2023: IETM Focus, Luxembourg
2023: Global Cultural Research Programme, Madrid (Programme design and facilitation)
2023: Precipitate Two, partnership between Dance Base and Yaraqa, Beirut. Programme design and facilitation.
2023: IETM Campus, Polverigi
2022: Global Cultural Research Programme, Brussels (Programme design and facilitation)
2022: Precipitate, partnership between Dance Base and Yaraqa, Beirut. Programme design and facilitation.
2022: CROWD, in partnership with The Work Room and TanzFaktur, Cologne. Facilitation and Artist Support.
2022: Global Cultural Research Programme, Istanbul (Programme design and facilitation)
2021: Global Cultural Research Programme, Online (Programme design and facilitation)
2019: PUSH + International Failure Lab
2018: Scottish International Tanzmesse Delegation
2017: Creative Scotland Sustainable Practice Travel Grant
2017: PUSH Gender and Sexuality in TYA Lab Participant
2016: Scottish International Tanzmesse Delegation
2016: #Trans Performance at Mirabilia Festival, Italy.
2015: MOOSS Research Lab, Belguim.
2010: Alva Noe/ Nicole Piesl Artist Mentorship at Impulstanz

Mentorship:
2021: Callum Madge from Birds of Paradise funded by Federation of Scottish Theatre
2017: Scottish Ballet Creates with Kerry Nicholls and Christopher Hampson
2017: The Bench Fellowship, Charlotte Vincent
2016: Kate Coyne, supported by Bonnie Bird Marion North Mentoring Award
2015: Anne McCluskey, Federation Scottish Theatre
2014: Jonathan Burrows & Jonzi D.
2012: David Gordon & Liz Lerman

Cultural Advocacy & Facilitation
Ongoing: Facilitator for SMHAF Scratch Nights and Festival Events.
Present: Associate Facilitator Rough Mix, Magnetic North
2023-2025: Chisenhale Dance Space Community Member
2023-2025: Equity Dance Committee Co-Chair
2023: IETM Green School, participant.
2023: Clore Leadership Pulse
2023: Cultural Organisation & Sustainability Management, delivered by Humak
2018-2023: Development of a Sustainable Ecology for Dance Touring, Making and Sharing in Dumfries and Galloway.
2021-2023: Equity Dance Committee Member
2021-2023: Equity Scottish National Committee Member
2022: Enough! Scotland, Degrowth Course Participant
2022: Clore Inclusive Cultures Course Participant
2020-2022: Core Team Freelancers Make Theatre Work focussing on Board Reform and Mental Health.
2021: Critical Friends, Somatic Approaches to Governance Structures supported by Creative Scotland’s Stay, See, Share fund.
2021: Critical Friend to Battersea Arts Centre
2020: Freelance Task Force member, sponsored by National Theatre of Scotland.
2016-2019: Federation of Scottish Theatre Working Towards Wellbeing Coordinator.
2019: Dance Ireland Healthier Dancer Conference Speaker.
2019: Elected to The Work Room Board, Glasgow.
2019: Elected to Puppet Animation Scotland Board, Edinburgh.
2019: IETM Lead Facilitator at The Festival of Silence Satellite, Milan.
2018: Scottish Government Cross Party Group for Culture Panellist.
2017: Federation Scottish Theatre Dance Forum Chair
2017: PUSH Project Plenary Meeting Gender in Theatre Workshop Facilitator.
2016: Joined Dumfries and Galloway Arts Steering Group.

Referees:
Matt Baker, The Stove Network (Dumfries): matt@thestove.org
Anita Clark, The Work Room (Glasgow): anita@theworkroom.org.uk

As my work exists between forms and contexts, alternative references with a specific perspective are available upon request.

Jobs/ Roles/ Experience LisT