Efva Maria Kristina Lilja (born 1956 in Huskvarna, Sweden) is a Swedish choreographer, dancer, visual artist, and author.
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.
became Weld, an independent platform for experimental processes and knowledge production led by Anna Koch.
[4] 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.
[5][6] 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.
[8][9] 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.
[13][14][15][16] 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.
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.
Since 2009 she is a member of the International Board for the Programme for Arts-based Research (PEEK), at Austrian Science Fund (FWF).