SOPHIE ARSTALL DANCE ARTIST
ABOUT
Of equal importance to me are the processes of dancing, performing and making as a collaborator or for my own solo practice. In constant research drawing from the world around me I look for new ways in which to enter into these processes to ultimately communicate the present, presence and to offer an embodied perspective of the world and the human condition. Half British and French, half of a twin, half way between Devon and London, the natural and the urban, the doer and reflector I think of myself inhabiting these in between places, drawn to find balance between polarities.
I see themes, interests and questions emerge in my work; a concern for how and why we move and are moved, an enquiry into where movement creativity is at its most potent, the relationship of imagination to our dancing and a fascination with the human condition and the theatre of the body, how every action and reaction is loaded with potential information and emotion, the humorous, tragic, absurd, revealing complexities. I am fascinated by the compositional, spatial, architectural, structural and essentially the poetic.
Trained at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, UK (First BA Hons) and with a Masters in Performance at LABAN as part of the internationally touring Transitions Dance Company. This website is a way of documenting and archiving what I do, and have done as a dancer, performer and maker. It is a way to map my dance history in images, thoughts and words and to grasp at the remaining threads of this ephemeral art form that I live day by day.