I am Jo Shapland
I am a multi/interdisciplinary artist, choreographer and performer with over twenty-five years professional experience of devising and presenting dance performances and installations. My work is rooted in landscape. It is developed and presented in spaces ranging from ruined farm-buildings to traditional proscenium theatres, from natural wilderness to urban architectural interiors. I have wide experience of collaborating with artists from a broad spectrum of disciplines and bring them into both my own and freelance projects. I constantly seek out and research the body through international workshops and placements. In 1998 I established Man Troi as an identity and vehicle for the presentation of my work in the public domain.
I have a long-term interest in choreographic aesthetics of simplicity, task and ‘sculpting’ in time and space.
I have lived and worked in Wales since 1993, and have a deep connection to its cultural life and wild places.
Originally trained as a contemporary dancer, I now practice a psychophysical training that includes Asian martial and meditation arts, improvisation and aerial dance. I practice an authentic movement discipline in the landscape alone and with others as a process for sourcing reference material.
My practice is time-based.
My performances are time-based autobiographies.
My work is site-sensitive.
My practice is both interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary.
My practice is the unraveling of intricate processes.
My ideas congregate as Visual Polyphony.
‘…Shapland’s dance skills afford her a supersensitive awareness of spatial characteristics, the body’s movement through deserted spaces or traces on walls and floors of activities and presences.’ Robert Clark (The Guardian, August 2010)
‘…haunting, painterly beauty…. remarkable presence’ Elisabeth Mahoney (The Guardian, Jan 2010)
‘mesmerising’ Hannah Waldram (The Guardian, Cardiff, March 2010)
‘virtuoso dancing’ David Adams, (Western Mail May 2005)
‘quiet passion and intensity…this artist has integrity, vision and commitment’ David Adams (Theatre In Wales, June 2004)
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