Emma Kerson (she / her) is a dance artist who lives in Kjipuktuk (Halifax) after fourteen years of life in Tkarón:to (Toronto).
Drawn to making as a means to understand one another, her work questions assumptions through collaborative experiences, pairing deeply researched physical ideas with daring interpretive choices. Her choreographic works have been developed in residency with adelheid, Arts Orillia, Citadel + Compagnie, Mocean Dance, MOonhORsE Dance Theatre, the National Ballet of Canada, Peggy Baker Dance Projects, and Shawbrook Residential (Ireland). Emma has been commissioned by Blue Ceiling Dance, The School of Toronto Dance Theatre, Young Company of Halifax Dance, and has been presented by platforms across Canada. In 2019 Emma formed Bare Nerve with Jane-Alison McKinney. Their full-length work, hard wire, premiered in 2023 and is touring throughout 2024. Emma is the 2023 winner of Live Art Dance’s Diane Moore Creation Award for her new solo What’s the Use?
As an independent dancer, Emma has worked with Julia Aplin, Patricia Beatty, Blue Ceiling Dance, Elizabeth Chitty, Jennifer Dallas, Robert Desrosiers, Dancetheatre David Earle, Sylvain Émard, Alyssa Martin, Michael Sean Marye, Sharon B. Moore, Lisa Phinney, Peter Randazzo, Simon Renaud, and Tedd Robinson amongst others.
Emma is a graduate of Dalhousie University (Honours B.A. in English), The School of Toronto Dance Theatre, and in 2021 she completed an M.A. at the Centre for Drama, Theatre, & Performance Studies at the University of Toronto. Her thesis focused on use, the covert politics behind the spaces the body occupies, and proposed absurding as an accessible act of resistance capable of transformative action and meaning-making in performance.