Charlotta Öfverholm

Since the founding of Compagnie Jus de la Vie in 1995, Charlotta Öfverholm has created more than 30 productions that have toured throughout Europe, North America and South America. Her work is rooted in physical dance theatre, combining depth, irony, brutality and humour. Since 2015, she has focused on creating opportunities for mature performers and promoting their visibility through her project Age on Stage.

Charlotta works with the body as an archive.

After more than forty years as a performing artist, I have learned that the body remembers more than language. It carries experience, resistance, humour, loss and desire. My artistic practice moves between physical dance, spoken word and music, where rawness meets poetry and the existential is always present.

Her international journey has taken me across Europe, New York and Los Angeles, working with companies and artists such as DV8 Physical Theatre, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, Complexions/Dwight Rhoden, Roberto Galvan, Robert Poole, Joseph Tmim, Corinne Lanselle, Martin Harriague, Sharon Fridman, Metros, NGC25, Farm in the Cave, Scottish Ballet, Sol Picó and many more. These encounters have shaped her artistic courage.

In Sweden, she has danced in several works by Björn Elisson, in Dramaten’s production of Cabaret by Dorte Olesen and Rickard Turpin, and extensively in Alexander Ekman’s KUCKEL, both on tour and at Orionteatern.

Her leading roles include Death in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal at Uppsala Stadsteater, by Hugo Hansén and Benke Rydman; Shakespeare’s Hamlet at Landestheater Linz, by Robert Poole; Alice in Alice in Wonderland at Stadttheater Giessen, by Roberto Galvan; and Lola in Lola and Mr Talk at Divadlo Archa, by Jan Kodet, for which she was nominated for a Thalia Prize at the National Theatre in Prague, Czech Republic.

She is currently touring internationally with Scottish Ballet as Elizabeth I in Mary Queen of Scots by Sophie Laplane and James Bonas.

Since 1995, she has created her own works, presented nationally and internationally. Her work refuses the separation between movement and voice, technique and lived experience.

In 2015, she founded Age on Stage to challenge ageism in the dance world and to redefine the ageing body as a creative force.

“I want to see mature artists standing beside younger, brilliant dancers with less experience. The meeting between generations is essential, both on stage and for the audience. When experience and youthful energy coexist, a deeper humanity emerges.

I do not believe in youth as a norm.
I believe in experience as momentum.
I believe in the encounter.

I work with what has already been lived.
And I let it speak.”

Charlotta has created commissioned works for companies such as GöteborgsOperans Danskompani, Norrdans, RTV Borås and SPIRA in Sweden, as well as Vertedance Prague/CZ, Ballet Linz/AU, Tanztheater Münster/DE and Peridance CDC/NY.

As well choreographed two operas directed by Mellika Melouani Meloni at Folkoperan, as well as Mikael Karlsson’s newly written opera MELANCHOLIA at the Royal Swedish Opera.

Together with filmmaker Anders Larsson, Charlotta has created four documentaries and two dance films. Some of them can be seen on Sadler’s Wells Digital Stage. 2025 she choreographed the NETFLIX movie Je máppelle Agneta by Emma Hamberg.

In 2015, Charlotta initiated AGE ON STAGE, a project that presents maturity on stage and questions norms concerning age and bodies within the field of dance. The project creates and presents international productions with mature dancers, as well as workshops and productions for people over 65, festivals and seminars on the subject. Age on Stage was the Swedish part of the European project Dance On, Pass On, Dream On, which included nine dance companies and institutions in eight different countries in the EU.

Öfverholm studied dance at Balettakademien Göteborg and at Alvin Ailey ADC in NYC. She is also a theatre graduate of UCLA in Film/TV/Video and of The Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in Los Angeles.

She teaches and choreographs for schools and universities all over the world and enjoys meeting and giving to new generations of dance. Since 2005, Charlotta has been the coordinator and programmer for Balettakademien’s International Summer Festival.