(English) Emma Portner — Choreographer

(English) Emma Portner

(English) Canadian choreographer Emma Portner is a multidisciplinary artist celebrated for her emotionally charged movement language and radical versatility across genres. Born in 1994, she trained at Canada’s National Ballet Summer School and The Ailey School in New York. At age 20, she became the youngest woman to choreograph a musical on London’s West End, and her early short films, garnering millions of views, established her as a trailblazer in dance cinema.

Since then, Portner has created work for artists like Doechii, Maggie Rogers, Blood Orange, and Sylvan Esso, while choreographing major commissions for the National Ballet of Canada, the Guggenheim Museum, and Lafayette Anticipations. The New York Times described her as “a singular talent who seems able to channel the fragility and power of the human condition in equal measure,” while Dance Magazine praised her as “a rare visionary, blurring boundaries between contemporary dance, film, and fashion.” Portner continues to push the limits of classical rigour and experimental form across stage, film, music, and installation. In “Tomorrow Was_____”, her choreography is both grounded and ethereal, embodying stillness, tension, vulnerability with striking precision, shaping the emotional atmosphere of the space, and anchoring the moving image in a deeply human language.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emmaportner/