Sophie Fouladi is a movement and mixed media artist and leader who strives to create projects that reflect topics in culture, society, and psychology. Born and raised in the Washington DC metropolitan area, she started her artistic journey as a violinist under the Suzuki method and was immersed in the classical music community of Northern Virginia. This experience drew her towards the classical ballet tradition, and she soon after began her dance training at the Great Falls Classical Ballet studio training in both the Vaganova and Lagat techniques as well as contemporary ballet. Her love of movement only grew as she became a member of the Madeira Select Dance Company where she trained in various styles such as modern, contemporary, hip hop, jazz, musical theater, and West African dance. 

       Sophie earned her bachelor’s degrees in both Dance and Psychology from the University of California Los Angeles, where she began to draw parallels between the two fields and fostered her interest in researching how movement, and its interaction with other artistic mediums, impacts cognition and emotional processing. She is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Arts Leadership at the University of Southern California where she is setting the foundations to create an integrative dance center focusing on performance, research, and care where movement artists and scholars can explore the interdisciplinary connections and applications of dance to the life sciences and humanities fields.

       As a dancer and choreographer, her work is informed by her upbringing across multiple artistic disciplines such as music, film, and theater as well as her identity as an Iranian-American woman and an advocate for mental health awareness. As a leader, she is committed to fostering an understanding of wellness through the arts and strongly believes that art holds the power to heal wounds and promote unity; her work in all areas is rooted in her unwavering belief that art is essential to the betterment of humanity.