Alexander Ekman

Alexander Ekman is an internationally sought after choreographer producing entertaining works of artistic integrity within the contemporary and classical dance world. He also creates pieces for theatres, opera houses and museums, and live performances/events in pop up locations around the world. He describes his work as ‘serious fun,’ associating his concept less with lavish spectacle and breath-taking tricks rather than with what both entertains and questions the observer. His mercurial temperament and fertile imagination thrive on creation and innovation. Alexander Ekman’s works are known for their clever ideas, fast-paced choreography and abundance of witty humour. His major collaborations make extravagant use of theatrical devices to create surreal worlds, and central to his work is the desire to delight an audience and hold its attention.

Ekman had a traditional ballet education at the Royal Swedish Opera Ballet School in Stockholm (1994–2001) and transition to the Royal Swedish Ballet (2001–2002). From 2002 to 2005 he danced with the NDT2 in the Hague, one of the most innovative and exciting youth companies. He tried his hand at choreography, with a prize-winning entry Swingle Sisters (one of the ballets from his Sisters trilogy) at the prestigious International Choreography Competition of Hannover in 2005. Then, during his subsequent engagement with Cullberg Ballet (2005–2006), he made the shift from a performer to a creator. Next year he created choreography, set and music to Flockwork for NDT2, which premiered in November 2006 and became his international breakthrough as a choreographer.

At twenty-two Ekman began freelancing career. Since then, he has produced around 50 pieces for dance companies across the globe, from the grandest of opera houses to the most innovative of contemporary theatres, not to mention multiple revivals. Cacti, created for NDT2 in 2010, brought him to world attention and remains his best known and most performed work. That same year this one-acter was given as a gift to the Oslo Opera from Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands during a state visit. The work was nominated for the prestigious Dutch Zwaan dance prize in 2010, won the National Dance Award (UK) in 2012, and was also nominated for the British Olivier Award (2013). In the subsequent years, Ekman has returned to the Hague on quite many occasions, first as the company’s resident choreographer in 2011–2013, then as a freelance artist producing Left Right Left Right (2012), Maybe Two (2013) FIT (2018) and Four Relations (2020) for NDT2, and Definitely Two (2013) for NDT1.

For more than a decade Ekman has enjoyed an auspicious and prolific creative partnership with Mikael Karlsson, a Swedish composer based in New York. They first came into contact when Ekman worked as a teacher/choreographer at the prestigious Juilliard School in New York City in 2011. Their first collaboration was the rhythmic-choreographic composition Tuplet (2012) for six dancers of the Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet in New York. Soon after the work’s premiere Ekman incorporated pop singer and co-founder of the Keep a Child Alive (KCA) Alicia Keys into the performance of Tuplet presented during her annual Black Ball fundraiser gala in New York. That same year Ekman and Karlsson collaborated on a multimedia ballet about the classical ballet called Tyll (Tule) for the Royal Swedish Ballet. Their next collaboration in A Swan Lake (2014), produced for the Norwegian National Ballet in the Oslo Opera House, received enormous attention worldwide. A surrealist interpretation of the renowned ballet classic by Tchaikovsky, this evening-length ballet also featured fancy costumes by genre-bending Danish fashion designer Henrik Vibskov and a set filled with 6,000 litres of water creating a real lake on stage. The documentary Rare Birds by T. M. Rives shows the process of how it became possible to create a lake inside an opera house.

They went on to collaborate on ballet productions demonstrating the imaginative synthesis of various theatrical devices and innovative designs on a similarly grand scale, including internationally acclaimed A Misummer Night’s Dream (Royal Swedish Ballet, 2015, awarded The Swedish Media Award: Inventor of the Year), COW (Dresden’s Semperoper Ballet, awarded the German National Theatre Award Faust in 2016), PLAY (Palais Opera Ballet, 2017), and immersive piece Rooms (Norwegian National Ballet, 2017). The recent production of Eskapist, with costumes by Vibskov and dramaturgy of Carina Nildalen (Royal Swedish Ballet, 2019), a corona-adapted, on-going piece for the stage called SHIFT (Royal Swedish Ballet, 2020), an immersive installation with actors, sculptures and massive visuals commemorating the Holocaust called Frailty of Man (Artipelag Museum, 2022), and a two-act ballet Hammer (Gothenburg Opera Dance Company, 2002). In March 2019, Ekman also contributed to Cirque du Soleil’s “One Night for One Drop” Charity Gala in Las Vegas with the water version of Flocking, part of his Swan Lake. That same year Ekman premiered his first work for Staatsballet Berlin. LIB featured four principal ballerinas of the company with costumes by haute coiffure stylist Charlie le Mindu.

Ekman’s outstanding achievements in choreography have been recently acknowledged by awarding him several highest cultural honors in Sweden including the SvD Operapris (2019), the Litteris et artibus medal (2021) and the Carina Ari Medal (2022) – one of the highest distinctions to persons who have commendably promoted Swedish dance.

Ekman’s talents go beyond choreography. He often collaborates in the audiovisual design elements and has proved himself a talented film director. His credits include video projections for Mats Ek’s production of Roland Schimmelpfennigs Hållplats at Stockholm City Theater (2009); his first dance film 40 m Under (Cullberg Ballet, 2009) shot in the former reactor hall at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, which later formed part of a triple bill performance; and the Kreativ (2017), a documentary series interviewing scientists, artists and creators on various aspects of creativity. The latter was broadcast on the Swedish National Television (SVT) and later made into an hour-length film presented at the San Francisco Dance film festival in 2018. The same festival featured a commissioned short film, Ekman’s Concise Guide to Natural Movement, in which Ekman collaborated once again with American film director T. M. Rives.