Dominique Sophie is a Montreal-based dance artist, choreographer and creative producer. Active in street dance and club cultures since 2006, her practice is primarily rooted in House and Waacking. Her artistic practice is grounded in street dance and club cultures and the values that run through them—improvisation, musicality, spontaneity, context, and cultural lineage—which she explores through her artistic work and events. Her work moves between dance, performance, and staging, with a particular interest in humour, absurdity, audience relationships, and the tension between structure and unpredictability.
Dominique discovered House in Montreal in 2006, studying with Irvin “Dazl” St. Louis and Marvin Baptiste, before moving to New York in 2007, where she immersed herself in the House community and the city’s club culture. There, she continued her training with dancers associated with Dance Fusion and MOPTOP, among others. In 2009, she began a master’s degree at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, studying between New York and Berlin and developing an interdisciplinary focus on dance research, creation, and production.
As a choreographer, she has been developing a body of work around freestyle practices and their relationship to the stage since 2013. Her work has been presented at Tangente, OFFTA, Festival 100Lux, and as part of CAM en tournée. Her most recent work, Shitshow, is an improvised performance for four dancers and a host that plays with the conventions of live performance, chaos, and audience participation.
She is also the co-founder and artistic director of Tap Water Jam, created in New York in 2011 with Théo “Rafiki” Rocha Custodio. At the intersection of dance, music, and club culture, the project has expanded to six cities—New York, Paris, Montreal, Brussels, Copenhagen, and Tokyo—and is now active through two international hubs. Dominique has developed and produced Tap Water Jam in Montreal since 2016, with more than 20 sold-out events, eight editions of international battles, and masterclasses welcoming over 800 participants. Collectively, its Montreal events have reached audiences of more than 4,000.
Her career has also led her to work as a performer, choreographer, producer, and collaborator on projects across Canada and internationally. In 2014, she was a co-choreographer and performer on legendary Detroit producer Theo Parrish’s European tour. Today, she continues to develop a practice in which artistic creation, artistic direction, and production inform and strengthen one another.
