Keso Dekker

Set and costume designer

Designer, author and historian Keso Dekker has created an extensive body of work in the fields of art, fashion, design and dance. He has designed sets and costumes for more than six hundred productions by dance and ballet companies around the world. In the Netherlands, he has collaborated with Dutch National Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theater, Scapino Ballet Rotterdam and Introdans, among others.

Dekker’s close relationship with Hans van Manen – with whom he has frequently collaborated since 1978 – plays a central role in his career. Since 2012 – when he designed all the ballets for Dutch National Ballet’s Present/s programme and worked for the first time with Alexei Ratmansky – he has also regularly created set and costume designs for this world-renowned choreographer.

Dekker has received several awards for his designs. In 2002, he was presented with the Oeuvre Prize of the Fund for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture, followed the next year by the Nederlandse Dansdagen Prize. In 2014, he won the first European Taglioni Award in the category ‘Best European Ballet Designer’, for his production of Choreartium with Bayerisches Staatsballett. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung once dubbed Dekker the “God of Lycra”.

Last update: 10-06-2025