Gwyn Emberton

Abot Gwyn 

Gwyn Emberton is a dancer, choreographer, teacher and dramaturg with over 20 years of experience. He is a freelance artist based in Malmö, Sweden, currently working with Skånes Dance Theatre as a teacher and rehearsal director, and also teaches at Danscentrum Syd and works with ilDance as a consultant artist and producer.

Gwyn’s choreographic work sits somewhere between contemporary dance and dance theatre with his previous mid scale works touring across the UK, Europe and the Middle East in recent years. His work places dance as an event blurring the lines between performers and audiences he believes in maintaining the integrity of and celebrating the skills and experience of the dancers’ artform. Sometimes his work includes text which he co-writes and he also co-designs the scenography. He has commissioned composers to create new scores for each work. Collaboration is central to each process. What is most important to Gwyn is how the body has its own stories and histories which we can see the world through differently via dance.

Gwyn is the Artistic Director of Wales based dance company Jones the Dance (formerly Gwyn Emberton Dance) which he created in 2015, he is also one third of award winning collective Light, Ladd and Emberton and is an independent dance maker. Via Gwyn Emberton Dance which recently changed its name to Jones the Dance, Gwyn created three full length works (since 2015) which have toured the UK and internationally. A new project in development was selected to be part of international dance platform Tanzmesse in 2020. His solo work has toured as part of the European dance network Dance Roads and at British Dance Edition and he has choreographed for many cross disciplinary projects in the UK. Since 2014, he has also been an artist, dramaturg and producer for iCoDaCo (International Contemporary Dance Collective) funded by Creative Europe and the Swedish and Welsh Arts Councils. The biennial project is created and produced by Swedish company ilDance. He regularly performs, co-creates and co-directs sited and site-responsive work with dance collective Light, Ladd and Emberton. Through GED/JtD Gwyn has been developing youth dance initiatives for young people in rural parts of Wales and for Deaf young people.

In the early days of his career, Gwyn danced with choreographers and companies such as Akram Khan, Scottish Dance Theatre, Matthew Bourne and Inbal Pinto in Israel. All experiences of working at the highest levels internationally which feeds into his choreographic practice now. He has also worked with Russell Maliphant Company on the piece Maliphant created with Sylvie Guillem. Gwyn also supports a range of early-years choreographers as a rehearsal director and dramaturg.