Emma is a Bay Area-raised dancer and choreographer putting down roots in Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone lands (Oakland). Emma’s work grounds itself in dance as an imaginative, world-building act / as a ritual to move through the intimate ways identity, power structures, and history play out at the level of the body / as an offering to be in relationship with land, ancestors, and spirits. This work weaves together practices of authentic movement, automatic writing, oral history, and ancestor, spiritual, and archival research. Ongoing inquiries center on transmuting the embodied afterlives of US empire in her Chinese and white lineage into more liberated, connected ways of being.

Emma’s movement lineages include their work as a current company member with Dancing Earth Creations, a BA in Dance & Anthropology from Bowdoin College, and summers spent dancing at Camp Winnarainbow. Emma was the 2023 Emerging Artist in Residence at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center (SADC), and has shown work at FRESH Festival, Dance Mission Theater, SADC, and the School for Contemporary Dance & Thought. You can also find Emma teaching young people to dance or with their toes in the Pacific Ocean.

Photo by Peter Raper