Winner of the 2023 DMCA

Raised by the sea in Kjipuktuk (Halifax), Emma Kerson is a dance artist drawn to making as a means to understand one another through collaborative experiences. Her work has been developed in residencies thanks to adelheid, Arts Orillia, Citadel + Compagnie, Mocean Dance, MOonhORsE Dance Theatre, the National Ballet of Canada, Peggy Baker Dance Projects, and Shawbrook Residential (Ireland). She has been commissioned by Blue Ceiling Dance, The School of Toronto Dance Theatre, and has been presented by platforms across Canada. Emma has interpreted works of artists including Julia Aplin, Patricia Beatty, Elizabeth Chitty, Jennifer Dallas, Robert Desrosiers, David Earle, Sylvain Émard, Lisa Phinney-Langley, Michael Sean Marye, Jane-Alison McKinney, Sharon B. Moore, Peter Randazzo, Simon Renaud, and Tedd Robinson. In 2019 she founded Bare Nerve with Jane-Alison McKinney. Their new work hard wire will be presented through Citadel + Compagnie in September and by platforms across Ontario throughout 2023 / 2024. Emma is a graduate of Dalhousie University, The School of Toronto Dance Theatre, and in 2021 she completed her M.A. at the Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies at the University of Toronto.

What’s the Use? is an experimental proposal through which seventeen local collaborators / co-creators from across Mi’kma’ki have been invited into the workshopping phase. The intention is to engage with a tapestry of ideas and influences as foundational solo research on what it is to use and be used. There is obvious and intentional choreographic risk in inviting an abundance of voices. The collaborators come from a wide range of artistic mediums and practices: dancers, choreographers, visual artists, directors, stand-ups, scholars, clowns, poets, drag artists, writers, sound designers, musicians, set designers, circus artists, and actors. By sharing practices and devising new ones together, we can experience a web of ideas and entry points found only through connection. Contributing to the independent community’s resiliency, something I feel speaks directly to the spirit of Diane Moore, What’s the Use? creates opportunity for myself and seventeen local voices to speak out about use and to search for meaning, together.