Olga de Soto is a cho­re­o­grap­her, dan­cer and dan­ce researcher. She was born in Valencia (Spain) and cur­rent­ly lives in Brussels (Belgium). She gra­du­a­ted from CNDC / Centre National de Danse Contemporaine d’Angers, after having stu­died clas­si­cal bal­let, con­tem­po­ra­ry dan­ce, and music the­o­ry in her nati­ve coun­try. As a dan­cer, she has wor­ked with cho­re­o­grap­hers such as Michèle Anne De Mey, Pierre Droulers, Felix Ruckert, Boris Charmatz. For five years, she has also been the cho­re­o­grap­hic assis­tant of Jérôme Bel and per­for­mer in his The Show Must Go On.

Olga began cre­a­ting her own cho­re­o­grap­hic work in 1992, explo­ring dif­fe­rent for­mats in numerous pie­ces. Since the end of the 1990s, her cho­re­o­grap­hies deal spe­ci­fi­cally with the role of memo­ry in live art, ques­ti­o­ning its value and las­ting qua­li­ty along two lines of research. The first cen­ters on the stu­dy of phy­si­cal memo­ry through a plu­ra­lis­tic appro­ach to dan­ce and the body, in works such as anar­bo­res­cen­ces (Théâtre de la Cité inter­na­ti­o­na­le, Paris, 1999), Éclats mats (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2001), and INCORPORER ce qui res­te ici au dans mon cœur (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2004 – 2009). The second axis explo­res works from the his­to­ry of dan­ce from the per­spec­ti­ve of the per­cep­tu­al memo­ries of both spec­ta­tors and dan­cers. The resul­ting pro­jects, such as histoire(s) (Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels, 2004), An Introduction (Tanz Im August, Berlin, 2010), or Débords (Festival d’Automne, Paris, 2012), deal with docu­men­ta­ti­on, tes­ti­mo­ny, archi­ves, oral sour­ces, nar­ra­ti­ve, and sto­ry­tel­ling. Her recent work mixes the lan­gu­a­ges of cho­re­o­grap­hy with tho­se of docu­men­ta­ry, per­for­man­ce, visu­al arts, and instal­la­ti­on, playing with the porous­ness of tho­se disciplines.

Olga’s cho­re­o­grap­hies have been pre­sen­ted in about twen­ty coun­tries and she is regu­lar­ly invi­ted to teach at uni­ver­si­ties and lead workshops.

In 2013, de Soto was awar­ded the Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers — SACD Prize (Belgium), in the cate­go­ry of Performing Arts, for her artis­tic tra­jec­to­ry and her cre­a­ti­ve research on dan­ce his­to­ry, espe­ci­al­ly her work on Kurt Jooss’ The Green Table, Débords. The same year, Débords was also nomi­na­ted for Prix de la Critique (BE). In 2019, her per­for­man­ce Mirage was nomi­na­ted for the Prix Maeterlinck de la Critique in Belgium (French-spea­king com­mu­ni­ty), in the cate­go­ry of ​“Best Dance Performance”.