Sedrig Verwoert (NL)

Sedrig Verwoert was born in Suriname and moved at the age of three to Amsterdam, where he later took the Urban Contemporary dance course at Amsterdam University of the Arts. In 2013, he won first prize at the prestigious Eurovision Young Dancers Competition. He then received a scholarship from the Van den Ende Foundation to continue his training with Igal Perry, artistic director of the American Peridance Contemporary Dance Company. One year later, Verwoert joined this company in New York, transferring to the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company in Israel in 2015.

In 2017, he returned to the Netherlands, where he received a contract as a dancer with ICK Amsterdam. Since 2019, Verwoert has been a freelance dancer and has performed works by Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten, Nacera Belaza, Vincent Colomes, Amos Ben-Tal, Emanuel Gat, Rami Be’er, Igal Perry, Maurice Causey and Troels Primdahl.

Verwoert has also been active as a choreographer for some years now. As a guest choreographer with Dutch National Ballet, he presented the solo The hard rocks will seem soft to us in 2019 and the group work L’Autre Côté in September 2020. He has been a Young Creative Associate with the company since the beginning of 2021. In this position, he created the dance film I Feel It Too, as a part of the programme Young Creatives. Verwoert drew inspiration for this film from life during the corona pandemic. He has also worked as a choreographer and dancer on Beyoncé’s visual album Black is King, and he was artist in residence with De Appel Art Centre, one of the most important centres of contemporary art in Amsterdam. In October 2021 Verwoert was curator of the Black Achievement Month programme Celebrating Diversity, during which his solo Renaissance premiered.

For their creation They/Them, Verwoert and his fellow choreographer and dancer Christian Yav were nominated for a ‘Zwaan’ award for Most Impressive Dance Achievement in 2020. In 2019, he won both the BNG Bank Dance Award and the Leo Spreksel Award, named after the former artistic director of Korzo Theater, in The Hague. Alongside his work as a dancer and choreographer, Verwoert also works as a movement coach.