Emily Schoen Branch is a teacher, choreographer, and dancer named one of Dance Magazine’s “Top 25 to Watch.”
She has been recognized with numerous residencies and awards, including the Martha Duffy Resident Artist for the BAC Space Residency at Baryshnikov Arts Center (New York), the Gibney Dance boo-koo award for emerging artists, and a Princess Grace Fellowship nomination through METdance (Texas). Her work has been developed through domestic and international residencies, among them the Tunisian National Theater and Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning’s Choreographers and Composers series. Emily has fulfilled more than fifteen commissions for companies and university programs nationwide, including the University of Washington, Olympic Ballet Theatre (Washington), Santa Barbara Dance Theater (California), Ormao Dance Company (Colorado), and Columbia Ballet Collaborative (New York).
Her former company, Schoen Movement Company, was the home for her creative work in New York for six years. A major highlight was a two-year collaboration with dancers from Tunisia, resulting in See me in your eye, an original evening-length work that premiered in New York in 2019. The project received support from Baryshnikov Arts Center, Dance Motion USA / Brooklyn Academy of Music, Queens Council on the Arts, LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, and the US Embassy in Tunisia. Her company has also appeared at Judson Memorial Church, WestFest, Jamaica Performing Arts Center, Joe’s Pub/DanceNOW, and at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival three times, as well as in a headline repertory program, An Evening of Dance with Emily Branch, presented by the Smith Fine Arts Series at Western Oregon University.
Beyond traditional venues, Emily created A Movement Flight, a site-specific, happy-hour performance series designed for breweries. It has been produced at five breweries across New York, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and California, and later reimagined in Seattle as Flight / An Evening of Dance and Drinks, which premiered to a sold-out audience at Lagunitas Brewing Co. in November 2022.
Emily also directs and produces screendance. Her film Hollow Hearts received Honorable Mention at the inaugural Pacific Northwest Ballet Dance Film Festival, won “Excellence in Dance and Videography” at AAlchemy’s Give Me a Break Dance Film Festival in New York, and was screened at the American Dance Festival’s Movies by Movers.
As a performer, Emily has worked with Kyle Abraham/A.I.M.; the Metropolitan Opera in works by Doug Varone, Mark Morris, and Carolyn Choa; and The Rolling Stones during their 50th Anniversary reunion tour. She danced for eight years with KEIGWIN + COMPANY, touring nationally and internationally, collaborating on more than a dozen new works, and serving as répétiteur. She also assisted Larry Keigwin on commissions for The Juilliard School, Marymount Manhattan College, and his community series Bolero.
Since relocating from New York, Emily has served on faculty at Pacific Northwest Ballet School, Spectrum Dance Theater, Olympic Ballet School, and Hengda Dance Academy, and her choreography has been supported by the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture.
She holds an MFA in Dance from the University of Washington and graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Arizona with a BFA in Dance and a BS in Nutritional Sciences. She began her early training with Kellie Plath near her hometown of Brookfield, Wisconsin.
