Born in Amsterdam, Freek Damen trained as a dancer at the Dutch National Ballet Academy. He went on to dance with Dutch National Ballet for one season, after which he switched in 2002 to Companhia Nacional de Bailado, in Portugal. He worked there for 23 years, sixteen of which he spent as a dancer.

Under the leadership of former artistic director Luisa Taveira, he increasingly took on the role of répétiteur, while still dancing in the rank of coryphée. For instance, he assisted Mea Venema in rehearsing Hans van Manen’s 5 Tangos, which he later revived on his own for the fortieth anniversary of Companhia Nacional de Bailado, in 2017.

In 2018, Damen ended his dancing career, and from then on until 2025 he was a member of the artistic staff of the Portuguese company. As a ballet master/répétiteur, he has staged works by various choreographers, including Tânia Carvalho, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Akram Khan, Rui Lopes Graça, Howard Quintero and Olga Roriz. He has also worked as a rehearsal assistant on productions by Mauro Bigonzetti, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Sharon Eyal, William Forsythe, Hans van Manen, Ohad Naharin and Sasha Waltz, among others. Furthermore, he was a répétiteur for classical productions like The Nutcracker, Giselle, Don Quixote, Raymonda, La Sylphide and Coppélia, and assisted Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer in rehearsals for their reconstruction of Vaslav Nijinksy’s legendary The Rite of Spring.

In 2020, Damen assisted former Dutch National Ballet principal Jeanette Vondersaar in rehearsing Kurt Jooss’ iconic The Green Table. This collaboration worked so well on both sides that he has become Vondersaar’s regular assistant for this ballet (to which Vondersaar inherited the exclusive staging rights from Jooss’ daughter). In 2022, this brought him back to Dutch National Ballet, which was presenting the work that year in their programme Shadows. It also took him to Saarländisches Staatsballett, Anhaltisches Theater in Dessau, Ballet West in Salt Lake City and Birmingham Royal Ballet.

Damen joined Dutch National Ballet as a ballet master in December 2025. Alongside this position, he also works regularly as a guest teacher.