Keren Levi is a choreographer based in Amsterdam. Her company, NeverLike, receives funding support from local, national, public, and private foundations. Levi’s work is idiosyncratically choreographic and multidisciplinary in nature. Her adventurous music–dance–video performances have a conceptual basis and are structured in conversation with principles of filmmaking and music-making. With a tender-sharp feminist focus, Levi creates a heterogeneous image of women in all aspects of her work. With an interest in placing dance in a space where social conventions and expectations become visible, Levi poses the question of what dance is, and what role dance can play in a broader socio-political context.
As a young dancer, Levi danced with Kibbutz Dance Company (1991–1994) and later with Batsheva Ensemble (1994–1996). After leaving the ensemble, she was engaged in various dance projects across Europe for several years before settling in Amsterdam around 1998. Over the years, Levi’s practice gradually shifted from freelance dancing to developing her own choreographic artistry, alongside teaching, coaching, advising, curating, and performing in her own work.
As a choreographer, Levi has built a versatile body of work, including, among others:
TERRITORY (2004), a live music–video dance performance about different forms of identity framing, her first full-length performance in collaboration with composer Tom Parkinson (UK) and media artist Tammiz Binshtock (IL). The work won a BNG Award, leading to a commission for a new piece titled THE PRIZE PIECE, which dealt with notions of ambiguity between pain and pleasure, prize and punishment.
COUPLE-LIKE (2006), a hyper-physical yet reduced duet made and performed together with Flemish choreographer Ugo Dehaes, was presented over 100 times in the Netherlands and across Europe. It was followed by a version for young audiences, COUPLE-LIKE #2 (2010), a remake that won Levi and Dehaes the Dutch Silver Cricket Award in 2011.
In 2007, Levi received a commission from TALA (Zagreb/HR) to create OUT OF SERVICE (2007), a work made with a local cast of five dancers and actors, which has toured the Balkan for a while.
In spring 2012, Levi premiered the live video–dance performance THE DRY PIECE at the opening program of Festival a/d Werf, Utrecht. A performance for four dancers veiled behind a projection screen and inspired by Busby Berkeley’s water ballets, THE DRY PIECE received a Dioraphte Award during Dutch Dance Days Festival 2013. After extensive touring, Levi created THE DRY PIECE | XL EDITION, a version for eight dancers (and more), which premiered at Julidans Festival 2016.
That same year, Levi created UPSIDE DOWN, a live video–dance performance for children aged 4+, in collaboration with Stockholm-based choreographer Dalija Acin Thelander. The piece was supported by an international co-production with partners from Poland, Serbia, Sweden, and the Netherlands.
Between autumn 2012 and summer 2014, Levi participated in the MA program at Amsterdam Master of Choreography (AMCh), at the Amsterdam School of the Arts (AHK), where she researched “Footnoting,” an embodied practice of footnotes and other forms of commentary. During that period, Levi was part of the core group that initiated BAU, a platform for dance and performance in Amsterdam, which has grown into a prominent organization lobbying to improve working conditions and prospects for independent makers in the Netherlands.
Following her graduation from AMCh and the birth of her twins in 2014, Levi premiered CLUBBING, a music–dance performance continuing her long-term collaboration with composer Tom Parkinson. The work marked an important shift in her choreographic practice, as she developed “musicdance” (a term coined by Levi, after “musictheatre”) as a kinship practice between music and dance, sound and movement.
During 2017–2024, NeverLike received structural funding support from the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AFK). During this period, Levi created three musicdance performances: FOOTNOTES (for CRIPPLED SYMMETRY) (2017), TO VOICE (2018), and UNMUTE (2019).
Outside the structural funding trajectory, Levi completed a 13-minute documentary–dance film about the ballroom scene, OTHERLAND (2018), in collaboration with director Jan Pieter Tuinstra. In 2018, she began working on a solo project, DEPARTING LANDSCAPES, which later evolved into THERE SHE IS, toured throughout the 2021–22 season.
After 2020, Levi continued developing work for young audiences. She created the video–dance performance TOPSY TURVY (2022), for two dancers, green screen, and 20 A4 papers, an ode to friendship. This work was followed by its German twin DRUNTER UND DRÜBER (2023), which remains in the repertoire of FFT Düsseldorf.
In 2025, Levi created BALBALLOONA, a dance with a ball of balloons for three dancers, six cardboard boxes, and seven balloons, exploring the colorful messiness of emotional interactions.
In the same year, she premiered HOT WALK, a video-essay performance for two dancers staged in a simulated park. Continuing her autobiographical trajectory from THERE SHE IS, the work reflects on the intersection of climate change, menopause, and motherhood.
Other than Parkinson, Levi’s other long-standing collaborators include creative producer Judith Schoneveld, audiovisual artist Assi Weitz, and dramaturge Igor Dobričić. Dobričić has been engaged as dramaturge on most of Levi’s works since 2005, and together they previously guided REWORK, a workshop for second-year students at the School for New Dance Development (SNDO), where Levi no longer teaches. Schoneveld supports Levi’s work through strategy, planning, fundraising, and long-term development, while Weitz collaborates on video installations, stage works, and filmic elements across multiple productions.
Levi’s work is frequently supported by Dutch public and private funding bodies and receives co-production support from partners including FFT Düsseldorf, Theater im Pumpenhaus Münster, SPRING Utrecht, and 2turvenhoog Almere.
