Shirley Esseboom was born in The Hague, the Netherlands in 1975. After graduating from the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, she joined the Nederlands Dans Theater 2 for four years. She continued her dancing with the main company, Nederlands Dans Theater 1, for more than 10 years. Within this period she also danced one season with Les Ballets de Monte Carlo in Monaco. During her dance career with NDT, she worked with choreographers such as Jiří Kylian, Mats Ek, William Forsythe, Ohad Naharin, Johan Inger, Paul Lightfoot/Sol Léon, Crystal Pite, Nacho Duato, Hans van Manen and many prominent others. After an impressive career with Nederlands Dans Theater, she continued her work as a classical ballet and modern teacher, ballet master of Lightfoot/Léon’s repertoire as well as for the Gothenburg Ballet in Sweden and she danced for various exclusive gala’s. The past years, Shirley has become a freelance ballet master for Kylian Productions, teaching and staging Jiří Kylian’s work around the world. Shirley has received three prestigious dance awards: the Encouragement Prize from the Stichting Dansersfonds ’79 (1998), the Merit Award from the Stichting Dansersfonds ’79 (2008) and the Golden Swan Award from the VSCD (2009).