Cove Park, in collaboration with The Work Room and TanzFaktur Cologne, will welcome two of the ten dance artists joining the CROWD – international dance exchange 2022 programme this summer, funded by the Goethe-Institut, Arts Council England, NRW KULTURsekretariat, Nordisk Kulturfond and Creative Scotland.
The Work Room and TanzFaktur are both members of CROWD, a collaborative network of international dance organisations, together seeking to support dance makers who engage with communities as part of their practice. The dance artists traveling to Scotland for residencies at The Work Room and at Cove Park are Alex McCabe (Glasgow/Milan) and Stefanie Schwimmbeck (Cologne). Glasgow-based dancer and theatre-maker Emma Jayne Parker will also be in residence as part of this project.
Alex McCabe is a Glasgow-based performer, performance maker and facilitator in dance and music. With this dual specialisation he has worked extensively and internationally in choreography for opera (Wexford Festival Opera; Teatro Reggio; Scottish Opera) and experimental interdisciplinary projects (British ParaOrchestra, Marc Brew; Fattoria Vittadini). Alex works with various organisations in Scotland towards broadening access to experiences and careers in dance and music, most significantly through his project SIIATE, supported by the Scotland-Europe Fund. Trained in dance and choreographic practice through Dance Base Edinburgh’s DEBS, Alex also holds an MA, PhD and Teaching Excellence Award from the University of Glasgow. Thanks to an international education, Alex is a fluent speaker of five languages and competent communicator in 8. He has collaborated as an interpreter and multi-lingual organiser with various performing arts festivals including Edinburgh International Festival and Festival Mirabilia.
Stefanie Schwimmbeck works as a freelance contemporary dancer and dance mediator and develops her own performances. She studied contemporary stage dance at the University of Music and Dance in Cologne. This was followed, among other things, by further training in Creating Dance in Art and Education at the University of the Arts in Berlin. Since 2022 she has been studying the Master in Scenic Research at the Ruhr University in Bochum. As a dancer she worked in productions by SONDER:SAMMLUNG, Theater Marabu, Britta Lieberknecht & Company, Projek Zukumpf, Tanzkompanie bo komplex, IP Tanz, Bianca Mendonca, SETanztheater, Maria Golding, Karel Vanek and Willi Dorner, among others. In 2018 she received the North Rhine-Westphalia scholarship for her study visit to the Trisha Brown Dance Company in New York. As a dance mediator, she teaches creative, contemporary dance and directs dance projects in schools, theaters, refugee homes and youth centers. She also gives release and alignment-oriented professional training and has been a lecturer at the Cologne University of Music and Dance and at the University of Siegen since 2019. In 2021 she worked as a sustainability consultant at the Comedia Theater in Cologne as part of the young talent grant Freie Kinder- und Jugendtheater NRW and has since been part of Performing for Future – Network Sustainability in the Performing Arts.
Emma Jayne Park is a dancer, theatre maker and arts advocate/activist working under the creative handle Cultured Mongrel. Making socio-political performance as a catalyst for encouraging change, her practice invites the audience to engage through questioning their role in the performance, role in the conversation and role in society. ‘High octane… energetic, witty and playful'(The Skinny), she plays an active role in challenging outdated infrastructures and invests in the development of a strong arts ecology driven by rigorous practice. She is currently a member of the Freelance Task Force, sponsored by National Theatre of Scotland with a focus on Board reform, pay structures, mental health and transparency. Her latest research focusses on failure, the imposition of failure, societal failure and the experience of a failing body. This will culminate in the development of a series of performances in various settings, scales and forms: including durational work Lauded, intergenerational work Womxn, mid-scale dance work Influenced and new research Cannot Be Fucked. In ongoing research she is developing a model of re-scaling large scale theatre work into living room based performances for people who cannot access public performance for medical reasons, as well as developing her practice choreographing middle scale work and as a movement director/ intimacy coordinator with theatre practitioners. Emma is Associate Artist with The Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival.
As part of Cove Park’s ongoing European Residency Programme, McCabe and Schwimmbeck have been invited to devise and lead a free movement workshop at Cove Park on Saturday 23 July. Moving Together is an opportunity to take part in a relaxed, interactive and imaginative family workshop, inviting children of all ages and their grown-ups to explore and make dance together.
Photography by: Buff & Sheen and Ian Watson.
