Meet the dancers - Emma Clayton

Emma is a professional dancer, both in live dance and video performance, a dance and yoga teacher, and an experienced choreographer, graduating with BA(Hons) from the Northern School of Contemporary Dance in 1998.  In addition to performing professionally, she has been drawn to work with a variety of community groups involving heritage, local culture and disability. Emma works with them to create unique works for each, blending dance, music and creative workshops to help them tell their own stories.

Emma’s work with communities is focused around her role as Artistic Director of Blood Memory Dance, where she has created multi-dimensional performance works for diverse inter-generational groups like Hawksworth memorial community, the Swathmore centre, the York Land Army festival, the Bradford Bubble Up festival.

Emma is a Founder Member of Ascendance, which devised and delivers the Dancing for Parkinson’s programme in Leeds and Bradford, firstly in local venues, and latterly online, where Emma is a lead DWP dance artist.  Her skills have expanded around video provision to include YouTube choreography and performance, 360 degree video and online teaching delivery.  Emma has been very much in demand under Lockdown, as an invited online guest artist for Hull Dance, for the Creative Well self-care programme for culture health and wellbeing, and she manages engagement with the Arts Council’s Time of Our Lives project in Yorkshire and Humberside.

Emma’s combined understanding of dance, yoga and physical therapy informs her very responsive approach to Dancing with Parkinson’s, and led to the introduction of her ambitious and successful “Dance Burst” programme for DWP, which goes from strength to strength whilst participants surprise themselves as they rise to the considered challenges which Emma sets the group, and for which she provides unbounded support and encouragement.

She’s a human dynamo. Even when she’s homeschooling!