Efva Lilja

Efva Maria Kristina Lilja (born 1956 in Huskvarna, Sweden) is a Swedish choreographer, dancer, visual artist, and author. As a freelance artist, she presents exhibitions, performances, films, and texts worldwide.

Lilja's work advocates a break with artistic labels, categories and genres. Since the 1980s, she has worked actively with critically developing the cultural politics of Sweden and abroad. Her work has been a part of developing artistic research specifically within the fields of dance and choreography.

Biography Efva Lilja left her hometown Huskvarna in 1972. After dance studies in Malmö, Örebro and Jönköping, she came to Stockholm and studied at the Ballet Academy 1977 to 1978 and at the University of Dance (now University of Dance and Circus) 1978 to 1980. She pursued further education at the Royal Academy of Dance in England, with Mirjam Berns in France, and in the United States, including a grant from the Sweden–America Foundation to spend one year at the Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation in New York 1980 to 1981. Her studies encompassed composition with Robert Ellis Dunn, ballet with Zena Rommett and Haynes Owens, and choreography and contemporary dance with among others Meredith Monk at Columbia University. She continued her education in dance film courses at the Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts. As a freelance dancer, she worked with several choreographers in Sweden and New York, touring with organizations such as and National Swedish Touring Theatre. Stockholm has been her main residence since 1982.

She made her debut as a choreographer in 1982. In 1985 she started E.L.D., a company where she was the artistic director for twenty years. At E.L.D. Lilja established a new way of working for the art of dance in Sweden. In 2006 E.L.D. became Weld, an independent platform for experimental processes and knowledge production led by Anna Koch.

Between 2006 and 2013 she was the vice-chancellor of the University of Dance and Circus in Stockholm, Sweden. In 2016 she became the artistic director at Dansehallerne in Copenhagen, where she was responsible for its reconfiguration and relocation process to establish a new national center for dance and choreography in Denmark.

Artworks In collaboration with other artists, Lilja has created pioneering works that have been performed in more than thirty-five countries, at major stages, in small intimate venues, on television, films, in schools and art forums. In 1994 she produced Entre Nos Espaces on commission for the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. She produced A Gentle Cut in 2000 and ELDSTAD in 2003 for the Swedish Museum of Modern Art. She created Mareld for Stockholm, the European Capital of Culture in 1998 and in 2001 she produced Madness in The Everyday Idyll at Nyköpingshus and Åkers Sweden, as well as The Illuminated Dream Aflame for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

More recent works include With Love and Think, Talk, Act and Enjoy commissioned by the Festival der Regionen in Austria in 2021, Love's Conversation is Dance in 2022, and A Strategy for the Future in 2023.

She has also directed, including works such as Huset with Allan Edwall, Magic Songs with Orphei Drängar, and collaborated as a choreographer with Russian director Anatoly Vasiliev in Moscow.

As a visual artist, she has participated in group exhibitions and presented several solo exhibitions, among them Beyond What Is Said There Is Dance at Galleri Artsight in Stockholm in 2023.

Awards and grants Lilja has received a range of awards and grants for her artistic achievements in dance. She was appointed an Honorary Member of the International Centre for Cultural Relations in 1999, in 2000 she received the Prix D'ASSITEJ and in 2009 she was awarded S:t Erik Medallion (in Swedish) in commemoration of her artistic achievements by the City of Stockholm.