Week 1 - Social residency - Why/dance/art (what is an artist?) - by Gwyn Emberton

Gwyn writes about week 1, Montgomery - November 2025

It’s been three months since the first residency. I’ve been procrastinating this. I’ve looked back over my notes and the images we took. 

I had so many questions about myself. I was wondering, well questioning why I had selected myself for the project, why now - it was available to me right now, but why me and not give space - I need to be making, exploring, trying, dancing, thinking about dance in the sense of the doing it not the making space for it to happen by others. 

Being in Montgomery where I grew up as a kid, working in the town hall where I spent many an occasion —— parties, amateur dramatics performances, church fetes, smoking in the public loos, where I’ve since presented work over the last 10 years - keeping my connections. Somehow returning at this moment and in the beginning of this project was kind of emotional. I’m still not sure why. Donald Trump was elected this week which was kind of consuming any mental space. It felt right that we were there dancing, and asking why dance? 

We met for the first time. Well, not met met - I’ve met Jo a few times before and feel like I know her and Anna and I have been on quite a few Zooms by this time. 

We met through our bodies, through our ideas as dancers and as artists and as makers or whatever it was we felt we were that day. We met as learners, as beginners with histories that spreads long into the distance. Perhaps it was this that was emotional, the act (or art) of looking back to think how we arrived and to think why dance - why we had all started to dance and why we kept doing it and what is meaning to us was/is/will be. There’s a lot there… Verbal communication or lack of it existed for each of us in some way so we found a way through movement, through the body. Dancing was out of necessity and connects each of us.

We appreciate being dancers.

We felt lucky. 

Written by Gwyn Emberton