Born in London in 1972, 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. In 1994, he joined the English National Ballet as a soloist, and a year later, he moved to Amsterdam to perform with the Dutch National Ballet. In 2000, he joined the Frankfurt Ballet, where he worked with William Forsythe and performed for two years before dedicating himself to choreography.

David Dawson has created more than 40 ballets that have been performed in over 30 countries across Europe, America, Asia, and Oceania, including A Million Kisses to my Skin (2000), The Grey Area (2002), Morning Ground, 00:00 (2004), Reverence, The Gentle Chapters (2005), The Disappeared (2006), A Sweet Spell of Oblivion, On the Nature of Daylight (2007), Giselle, 5 (2008), The World According to Us, Faun(e) (2009), The Third Light, Dancingmadlybackwards (2010), Timelapse/(Mnemosyne) (2011), Day4 (2012), The Human Seasons, Opus.11, Overture (2013), Empire Noir, Tristan + Isolde (2015), Styx, Swan Lake (2016), At the End of the Day, Citizen Nowhere (2017), Anima Animus, The Four Seasons (2018), Requiem (2019), Voices (2021), Legacy Variations, Affairs of the Heart, Romeo and Juliet (2022), Symphony No.2, and Four Last Songs (2024).

David Dawson has received numerous awards, including the prestigious Benois de la Danse.

He has been an associate artist at the Dutch National Ballet since 2015 and was an associate artist at the Semperoper Ballett from 2020 to 2024. Between 2004 and 2012, David Dawson served as a resident choreographer at the Dutch National Ballet, the Semperoper Ballett, and the Royal Ballet of Flanders.

David Dawson is the artistic patron of Junior Ballet Antwerp and was named choreographer laureate of the European School of Ballet in 2019. He has also been invited as a jury member for the Benois de la Danse in Moscow and the Dance Open International Ballet Festival in Saint Petersburg.