Janice Parker is an award-winning independent dance artist and choreographer, based in Edinburgh, Scotland and working both locally and internationally. Creating across art-forms Janice has developed an immense body of work in her 40 years of practice, including live performance, film, text-based work and installation; Janice also instigates and facilitates projects, leads residencies and workshops, teaches and mentors and is active in dance development, equalities and social action. Her practice is collaborative, responsive and co-created; people, place, and social context drive her work. She often forges partnerships outwith the dance main-stream, and challenges the notion of who can dance and what dance can be.

Her most recent work Small Acts of Hope and Lament, is a dialogue between body and land that began during lockdown and continues to be an on-going outdoor daily live practice, excerpts of which she posts regularly on her twitter feed. Numerous iterations have resulted from this action, including a series of short films for the social justice and equalities network Necessity, a film commission for this year’s Edinburgh International Festival, a series of mini-films for the (Un)ruly Book at the Architecture Fringe by Voices of Experience and Raise the Roof to be screened at COP26, and a series of outdoor workshops that manifest as quiet protest and resistance pushing against the commodification of movement and of nature, and pulling us towards a direct felt sense of and connection to the natural world.

Image: Small Acts of Hope and Lament, Janice Parker (photography, Ryan Buchanan)