Interviews

Name: Emma Martin
Degree/Masters: B.A. (2010)

Tell us a little bit about your most recent production Tundra, the show that opened this year’s Dublin Dance Festival.
Tundra is a strange world that four characters enter into, where a warped sense of reality reigns over logic and reason. The world that they step into is quietly presided over by a strange man (played by the wonderful Raymond Keane), his almost sinister presence warps the atmosphere and tone. There is an underlying narrative, that is never really explicitly expressed in the piece, that he has been waiting for them to arrive and they experience some sort of déjà vu when they first come in. Ultimately it's about souls that are lost and searching. I wanted to work with experiences that are familiar to us all, but to edit with a sense of dream logic and displacement. 

You’ve said previously that your work is influenced partly by the daily experience of hellishness and heavenliness on Earth. What do you mean by that?
On a day to day basis we are all witnessing a lot of darkness around us, be that the heroin addict you walk by on Westmoreland St, or headlines about a violent murder or women stoned to death in Pakistan. We're surrounded by darkness, which of course wouldn't exist if there was no light. I'm endlessly interested in exploring human nature, but in particular our chaos, and struggle with desire and death, good and evil, and so my work always comes from that desire to mine what it is to exist in this world, what was before this life and what's after. With Tundra I wanted to look at familiar concepts, myths and truths, depending on one’s beliefs I suppose, exploring notions of heaven and hell as two extremes from which to explore states of mind. 

Your dance, Listowel Syndrome, was inspired by an incident in 2009 when 50 people lined up in court to shake hands with a man who was convicted of sexually assaulting a women. Was that a difficult piece to work on and what was the reaction?
Yes sometimes I look back and think I must've been mad! It was difficult, particularly as there was a good bit of media interest, which I tried to ignore. I remember one of the tabloids ran a piece with the headline "Rape play fury", describing the outrage of a local councillor in Listowel. I was so blown away by that courtroom incident, but also saw it as a defining moment that put the social, political and religious divide on such a public stage. The piece was well received.

When did your interest in dance and choreography start?
Well I started dancing at the age of three. It wasn't until I was 12 when started to fall in love and take it seriously and knew then that I was going to become a professional dancer. So I left school after my Junior Cert and went to train in Germany. I never really had any notions about making choreography until I took a break from performing, I was waitressing and watching lots of foreign films, and began to feel an itch that needed to be scratched. I just knew then that I needed to create. So I started off making little homemade films, sometimes with dance, sometimes without, editing together audio tracks. It was a fun and very creatively free time.

What is the most useful piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Never to submit or yield. And also, sleep when you're dead, (though I'm starting to doubt this one).

Who would you invite to your dream dinner party?
Freddy Mercury, Cindy Sherman, Bill Murray, Karen Carpenter, David Byrne, David Lynch and my mum to get things going.