ARTIST SPOTLIGHT #3: Sophie Sotsky | TYKE DANCE
Know first about some of our Artists and their Companies on our ARTIST SPOTLIGHT leading up to Volume IV, Issue II.! Learn a little about who they are and what they are most passionate about!
Todayâs SPOTLIGHT is:
Sophie Sotsky | TYKE DANCEÂ
WEBSITE: tykedance.com // oozlum.com
THREE WORDS THAT DESCRIBE YOUR CHOREOGRAPHY:
Effort, Endurance, EndorphinÂ
ABOUT Sophie
Sophie Sotsky is a Brooklyn-based dancer and choreographer. Since founding TYKE DANCE in 2011, Sotsky has shown her work at Movement Research at The Judson Church, The Center for Performance Research, Triskelion Arts, Dixon Place Theater, The Panoply Performance Laboratory, Soundance Studio Theater, AUNTS at Arts @ Renaissance and The Chocolate Factory Theater presents Sarah Maxfieldâs THROW, curated in 2012-2013 by Lindsey Dietz Marchant.
When not dancing Sophie works as a production electrician, lighting dance at New York Live Arts, The Kitchen, The Chocolate Factory and a handful of other venues.
Sophie writes about contemporary performance for Posture Magazine.Â
ABOUT Sophieâs CREATIVE PROCESSÂ
My dances investigate the themes of exertion, exhaustion, effort and error.
I work closely with Physical Ordeal:
As a method of inquiry into dance as time-based art.
To un-abstract the performing body without the use of imported narrative. (To humanize.)Â
To poke fun at dance -- the difficulty of it, the hopelessness of it all, and the archaic nature of requiring such an enormous amount of energy for a thing perceived to have such a comically low payoff.
To romanticize dance -- the difficulty of it, the hopelessness of it all, and the quixotic nature of such an undertaking.
What artists are you influenced by? Why so?
My first choreographic influence is Ms. Elizabeth Streb. From very early on in my dance making I was obsessed with Strebâs aesthetic of brutality, toughness, strength and power. But my use of these themes does not constitute a direct replication of Strebâs aesthetic; itâs in conversation with hersâ Streb uses the accomplishment of extraordinary feats to portray her dancers as superhero-like (un-human); I use the attempting of extraordinary feats, and often the failure to expertly perform them, to portray my dancers as extremely human (un-superheros).
More recently, Iâve been thinking about the work of Minneapolis-based choreographer, Morgan Thorson. As a student at Wesleyan University, I saw her masterful âHeavenâ (2009), and was deeply moved by it. Ms. Thorson told us afterwards in a talk-back with the audience that she had sought to portray her dancers as comprising a spectrum of gender. She told us that, in her mind, Heaven was a place free from gender. Indeed, the piece featured effeminate men wearing skirts and dresses, short-haired masculine women and a host of other people â some who seemed androgynous or generqueer in their appearance, and others who appeared to be traditionally identified, or cisgendered. Yet when they stood together, all dressed in white (various shades and textures, though), they seemed, beautifully, like one entity.
I feel strongly about working with a cast of people who are as different from one another as they are from me. Not only different in terms of identity signifiers such as gender identity, but also different in terms of physicality, dance training, and points of engagement with dance or physical practices. Some of my dancers are masterfully classically trained and some have no dance training at all. Yet I still work a great deal with group unison. I am trying to show a spectrum whose poles are equally beautiful despite their distance from one another. âMany spectrums, actually. I want to portray each performer as unique, as beautiful, and as a human being. Thorsonâs notion of a heavenly spectrum, I feel, speaks strongly to my own aesthetic value system: exertion, exhaustion, effort and error â and therein, humanness.Â
Say what you want to say! Have a quote you live by?
"Maybe it's some pointless act like... pouring water into an old pan that has a hole in the bottom, but at least the effort you put into it remains. Whether it's good for anything or not, cool or totally uncool, in the final analysis what's most important is what you can't see but can feel in your heart. To be able to grasp something of value, sometimes you have to perform seemingly inefficient acts."
-Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About RunningÂ
FOLLOW TYKE DANCE
FACEBOOK:Â facebook.com/TYKEDANCE
TWITTER: @TYKEDANCE
INSTAGRAM: @TYKEDANCE
Check out TYKE DANCE at Volume IV, Issue II., on Friday, August 22nd at 7:30pm + Sunday, August 24th at 3pm!
Volume IV, Issue II. is happening August 22-24!!!Â
Get your tickets HERE!
Photo credit: Lindsay Keys
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