Emma Portner

Emma Portner (born November 26, 1994, in Ottawa, Ontario) is a Canadian professional dancer and choreographer. She began dancing at age three and trained competitively before spending summers with the National Ballet of Canada. She attended Canterbury High School's arts program in Ottawa's dance stream. At 17, she moved to New York City to train at The Ailey School but left after five months to begin her professional career.

By age 20, she had become the youngest woman in history to choreograph a West End musical, Bat Out of Hell. Her short dance film Dancing in the Dark gained wide online attention. She has created choreography for Justin Bieber, including his music video for "Life is Worth Living" (2015) and his Purpose World Tour. Her choreographic commissions have come from institutions including the National Ballet of Canada, the Norwegian National Ballet, GoteborgsOperans Danskompani, the Guggenheim Museum, Jacob's Pillow, Lafayette Anticipations, and the Theatre des Champs-Elysees. She is also a vocalist with the indie music duo Bunk Buddy.

In Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021), Portner portrayed the spirit form of Gozer, providing the character's physically distinctive and unsettling movement whenever unusual body language was required. Director Jason Reitman reached out to Olivia Wilde via text message to cast her as Gozer's physical humanoid form, with Wilde appearing uncredited; Portner was separately credited for the spirit-form body performance. The character is also voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo. Portner and Wilde together give the character two distinct physical registers: Wilde's composed and commanding surface presence, and Portner's fluid, uncanny movement in the sequences requiring a supernatural physical vocabulary.