SOPHIE LAPLANE

Franco-British-choreographer SOPHIE LAPLANE, Choreographer in residence at Scottish Ballet, showcased her first short work Oxymore, at the  The Edinburgh Festival 2013, which was hailed as a success by the critics. She has since presented a number of works for Scottish Ballet in  large scale theatres in Scotland and internationally. Her work, Maze, which premiered as part of a Scottish Ballet Triple Bill, was later adapted for film and shot on location by director Eve McConnachie and won  the Best Screen Dance Short at the 2015 San Francisco Dance Film  Festival. Her richly textured, unpredictable style is further defined in Si bilo, 2016 and her one-act piece Dextera, celebrating the act of creativity, devised for Scottish Ballet’s 50th anniversary celebrations in 2019.  In addition to works for Scottish Ballet, Sophie has created various independent pieces, as a freelance artist, including Click! for Ballet Black at the Barbican, Vis-à-Vis, a pas de deux revisited, at the New York  Choreographic Institute, and Watusi for the National Youth Ballet UK at Sadlers Wells Theatre, London..Working again with young dancers, she created Dialogue for the Scottish Ballet Youth Exchange Programme which was performed at Turino Danza Festival 2019. 

In March 2020 she returned to the New York Choreographic Institute to create 20/20, a group piece. While in New York, Sibilo was performed  at the Joyce Theater. George(ette), created for Central School of Ballet,  

was due to premiere that same month but had to be cancelled due to the the Covid pandemic. London performances of Sibilo and Dextera at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, were also cancelled due to the pandemic.  

With theatres closed, Sophie has furthered her interest in dance film.  She had already been involved in Scottish Ballet’s Digital Season 2017  with the 360°filmed piece The Perfect Place in collaboration with the  BBC, and created A Work In A Week: Idle Eyes, live-streamed for Scottish Ballet’s Digital Season 2019. Recently via Zoom she created In doors for 36 dancers of Scottish Ballet. She has also re-worked Oxy more for the EIF, My Light Shines On, an evening with Scottish Ballet and created a new version of Oxymore with twelve dancers for the  Ballet Contemporáneo del Teatro San Martin in Buenos Aires.  

Prior to her career as a choreographer, Sophie danced with Scottish  Ballet in Classical and Contemporary roles with internationally renowned choreographers. She trained at the Opera de Paris school and the  Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse, Paris.