︎ CONTACT:
erykadellenbach@gmail.com


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photos by Jono Melamed (2023)

photos by Whitney Browne (2023)

E r y k a   D e l l e n b a c h (they)
is a genderfluid filmmaker, performance artist and educator based in the Sonoran Southwest (Turtle Island/US). Their embodied films and performances are rites of passage for themselves and collaborators driven by consent practices, inquisitive hedonisms, corporeal excavation and a belief in the capacity for mutual transformation through collaboration and art-as-life process. Their works mine relationships to power, the malleability of consciousness and psychophysical thresholds.

Their process and technique have been informed by studies in dances of resistance including Butoh, flamenco and martial arts. They are grateful to the teachers who have offered potent dances and knowledges influencing their path: Wendy Clinard & Sonia Sanchez (flamenco), Atsushi Takenouchi, Yumiko Yoshioka and Vangeline (Butoh), Chen Huixian (Chen Taiji) & Yunuen Rhi (Baguazhang), and Mestre Besouro Preto Manganga (capoeira). They have worked with artists across mediums including Yunuen Rhi, Martin Toloku, Atsushi Takenouchi, Tino Sehgal, Amanda Gutierrez, Tori Wrånes, Éva Mag, Matty Davis, Nola Sporn Smith, Amelia de Rudder/La Casa de Satanas and the band HOGG

Eryka has presented work at venues such as Alliance Française Kumasi (Ghana), crazinisT artisT studio (Ghana), Communitism (Greece), Movement Research at the Judson Memorial Church, Coaxial Arts (LA), Casa Moloch (MX), Lausanne Underground Music & Film Festival (Switzerland), Ann Arbor Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, Roulette Intermedium, Green River Cemetery, Virginia Commonwealth University, Intuit Outsider Art Museum, Links Hall, No Nation Gallery, and at the Shiryaevo Bienalle of Contemporary Art (Russia). They have been a resident artist at perfocraZe International Artist Residency (Ghana), eX...it! international butoh dance exchange and performance festival (Germany), Earthdance (MA), Echo Luna (Ukraine) and Cucalorus (NC).

They earned a bachelor’s degree in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a master’s degree in Film, Video, New Media, Animation and Sound from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

They are a Senior Videographer and Editor at Arizona Public Media, and continue to work independently as a freelance filmmaker, performance artist, choreographer, educator and interviewer. They are a celluloid filmmaking instructor at MONO NO AWAREa collaborator of the transnational group HEKLER and an advocate with California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP). They are a board member of Movement Culture, LLC (Tucson, AZ).

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image by Raven Jackson


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Autobiographical Fragments, 10/14/2020





photograph by Maria Baranova for Faces of Downtown Scene, Gowanus, 2020

As a child, I was inspired by my father's testimonies of hiding silently in trees to hunt deer in the forest preserves surrounding our home. Venturing out alone for hours at a time I slowly cultivated the ability to disappear. Reminiscent of a peeping tom, I would climb trees, hide in shrubs and grasses staying completely still until the animals would come out and go about their life without us. I would study the attention and body mechanics of the non-humans as they moved through the complex, sticky ecosystems beyond the trails and try to emulate them to the best of my human ability. These experiences in the forest, marshes and prairies of the midwest had a powerful impact on the way I read my surroundings and the people I encounter(ed). They also significantly shifted my focus towards the body and taught me over time about the hidden truths that become embedded throughout it and how words often contradict that. It also constituted my formative movement studies and spawned my inclinations that led me towards slow time, long process, Butoh and anthropology.



              Polaroid by Raven Jackson, Brooklyn, 2020



Polaroid by Muyassar Kurdi, Ridgewood, 2019




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