Kristian Lever is a Finnish-British award-winning choreographer. Raised in Helsinki, Finland, he started his dance education at the Helsinki Dance Institute and later with the Finnish National Ballet School. His passion and ambition to dance lead him to continue his training at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy, as well as later on at the Palucca Hochschule für Tanz Dresden.
Kristian’s performance repertoire includes works by Jiří Kylián, Nacho Duato, Ohad Naharin, Marco Goecke, Natalia Horencna, John Neumeier and many others. Under the direction of Mr. John Neumeier and Kevin Haigen in Hamburg, Kristian was offered his first professional engagement as a choreographer at the young age of 20. He has created several works for The National Youth Ballet of Germany, Croatian National Ballet of Rijeka, Croatian National Ballet of Split, Ballet Theatre Tivoli in Copenhagen, festivals of the Royal Danish Ballet, Ballett Vorpommern, the Hamburg Ballet, the Ukrainian National Ballet, the Salzburger Landestheater Ballet Company, as well as for dancers with Nederlands Dans Theater, Hessisches Staatsballett and The Royal Ballet.
Kristian founded his own production based dance company, Klever Dance. Creating a platform which allows him complete artistic freedom and to collaborate with world renowned dancers, actors, designers and composers. The company is constantly striving to create art that speaks to a larger demographic than the regular theatre goers. Enjoying creating multi disciplinary dance theatre performances, Klever Dance recently premiered Kristian’s latest full evening production «FRAMEWORK», in November 2019, a show crossing borders between theatre and dance. The production was co-written by Kristian and Kellen McDaniel. He was most recently awarded the prestigious Erik Bruhn Prize representing Hamburg Ballet, John Neumeier for his choreography «An Intimate Distance», hosted by the National Ballet of Canada on March 23, 2019 at the Four Seasons Center in Toronto. Germany’s TANZ Magazine’s yearbook of 2019, honoured Kristian Lever as «Promising Talent 2019».
