︎ CONTACT:
erykadellenbach@gmail.com
CONTENTS-
PBS
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 AWARE, a 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 JacksonHome
BODY & PERFORMANCE
official performance website: https://dislodge.space/Main
DISLODGE
(2019-ongoing)
is a performance by Matty Davis and Eryka Dellenbach that critically examines power and difference. Both animate and inanimate bodies exert, sustain, and absorb vectors of force that activate precarious psychological and physical structures. Pivoting around one anothers’ vulnerabilities, Davis and Dellenbach are cast into realms of sensation that push the limits of empathy.
Desire—to be vulnerable, to go deeper, to be supported, to be radically free—engages a promise that must be continuously reinstated, trusted and fulfilled, or broken from one moment to the next.
Dislodge carefully pits rigorously tuned choreography against improvisation, rendering the latter as a an urgent and fragile frontier for human freedom and expression. A sparse collection of objects—inlcuding a Civil War-era cannonball, a molten and recast ball of lead, a plank of wood from the Park Avenue Armory’s original floor, and a glove altered to fit Davis’s maimed right hand—hold contextural residues of trauma and transition that are refracted by manner and gender, as Davis and Dellenbach take them--and one another--in, hold them, transform them, and let them go.
WOOD BONE MILL
a performance work originally by Bryan Saner & Matty Davis, taking place over each of the seasons between 2017-18 at Bryan’s home in Chicago. In July 2019, the work expanded to incorporate architectural elements sourced from Atelier Bow-Wow’s Piranesi Circus installation at the Chicago Cultural Center, as well as performance by Eryka Dellenbach & Sara Zalek.
Click for response by Carole McCurdy for Performance Response Journal
NIGHTSHADE
Song & Film by Maren Celest (CHI)
Dance by Eryka Dellenbach
Chicago, 2019
Click for more information on NIGHTSHADE & our process
16mm Films by Muyassar Kurdi (2017-2020)
Vast Geographies (2020, upcoming premiere)
Roulette Intermedium
Field Dances (2019)“...a 16mm dance film ruminating on space, scale, micro-movements, and anatomy, featuring movement by Kurdi and Eryka Dellenbach with music by Ka Baird.”
Film by: Muyassar Kurdi
Performance: Eryka Dellenbach & Muyassar Kurdi
Cinematography by: Muyassar Kurdi & Eryka Dellenbach
Lighting by: Eryka Dellenbach
Screenings:
Spectacle Theatre, NYC
KET, Athens Greece
Areté Gallery, Brooklyn
A Song for Many Women (2018)
“I created a 16mm short movement film in 2018 called “A Song for Many Women” – which is part of my 16mm trilogy that will be presented at the exhibition – performed by my collaborator, Eryka Dellenbach. It was largely inspired by Audre Lorde’s poem, “A Song for Many Movements,” dedicated to the South African freedom fighter Winnie Mandela. I originally read the poem in her book Sister Outsider, on the topic of ”Transformation of Silence into Language and Action.”
I included a many-layered solo voice piece. I created the image and sound separately but alongside each other, and combined them later in the editing process. It was a fruitful experience to see how the movement and voice effortlessly related to one another. Recently, I provided voice scores and graphic scores to my collaborator to inform her movements. This was part of the process for my most recent untitled 16mm film work that premieres in the spring of 2020, as part of my Roulette Intermedium commission. “ -Muyassar Kurdi, National Sawdust interview
Screenings:
Anthology Film Archives
Zaratan - Arte Contemporânea, Lisbon Portugal
nariz entupido, Lisbon Portugal
Salao Brazil, Coimbra Portugal
Oficinas do Convento, Montemor-o-Novo Portugal
Teatro do Calafrio, Guarda Portugal
Spectacle Theatre, NYC
Areté Gallery, Brooklyn