Lea Ved
Lea Ved (1991) is a performer and choreographer based in the Netherlands. Her dance career has ranged from practice in roots of breakdance and street dance culture with Victor Quijada/RUBBERBANDance Group in Montreal, Canada (2013-2016), to performing Mats Ek's role of Julia in Julia & Romeo with the Royal Swedish Ballet in Stockholm (2016-2018). She also danced and toured internationally with Nederlands Dans Theater for five years (2018-2023) and as a guest artist with Kidd Pivot and Out Innerspace Dance Theater.
Since graduating from the Juilliard School in 2013, she has worked both as a freelance artist and repertoire company dancer — creating new work with Crystal Pite, Hofesh Shechter, Sharon Eyal, Marina Mascarell, most influentially among others — and meanwhile sharing workshops, pursuing creative exchange, and developing as a creator. Her choreographic work developed alongside her dance career, in reflection, deviation, and inquiry. Her creations are exploratory and investigative in nature, seeped between the detail of form and a cultivated improvisational practice. Her more notable works as a choreographer have been produced by Göteborgsoperans Danskompani, NDT, Korzo Theater, Heavy Hitters Breakdance Crew and CaDance Festival.
For her work darling we're nowhere but here (Korzo, 2020), she won the Club Guy & Roni Partner Award during the 2021 Rotterdam International Duet Choreography Competition, and was also invited to the 2022 Sentidos Choreographic Competition. She has been selected twice to create for Göteborgsoperans Danskompani's choreographic exchange (2018 & 2021), and was part of the Piket prize nomination and win for the Heavy Hitters breakdance crew for her collaborative work, Common Enemy, as part of the CaDance Festival in The Hague (2023). In 2024 she creates with programs GibneyPro in New York City, Nuova X in Torino, and b12 in Berlin. In Spring 2025 she will premiere work with Poetic Disasters Club and ChoreoLab, both which will be included in CaDance Festival.
Lea has taught and shared a number of creative research workshops, including at The Juilliard School, Gibney Dance, b12, Out Innerspace, No)One. Art House, Motion Lab, and Nederlands Dans Theater, among others. She has worked closely with Victor Quijada, teaching the RUBBERBANDance Method and assisting with directing and staging repertory at Springboard Danse Montreal, USC Kaufman School of Dance, North Carolina School of the Arts, and Domaine Forget.