David Dawson

Born in London, choreographer David Dawson trained at the Rona Hart School of Dance, the Arts Educational School and the Royal Ballet School. In 1991, he won the Prix de Lausanne and joined the Birmingham Royal Ballet that same year. He joined the English National Ballet as a soloist in 1994, and a year later, moved to Amsterdam to perform with the Dutch National Ballet. In 2000, he finally joined the Ballet Frankfurt, where he worked with William Forsythe for two years, before devoting himself to his own works. Between 2004 and 2012, he was a resident choreographer of the Dutch National Ballet, the Dresden Semperoper Ballet and the Royal Ballet of Flanders. He worked as associate artist of the Semperoper Ballet from 2020 to 2024 and has been an associate artist of the Dutch National Ballet since 2015.
He received the Benois de la Danse and was nominated for the UK Critics’ Circle National Dance Award for The Grey Area (2002). He also received a Golden Mask Award for Reverence (2005, the Mariinsky Ballet) and was awarded the Choo San Goh Award for The Gentle Chapters (2005). More recently, Four Last Songs (2024) was shortlisted for a National Dance Award.