Prism Published in Apex Magazine’s Zodiac Issued Guest Edited by Sheree Renée Thomas

September 10, 2018September 10, 2018 Stefanie ElrickLeave a comment

I’m pretty proud and excited that a piece of short fiction I’ve been working on for quite some time has been published in Apex Magazine‘s Zodiac issue guest edited by Sheree Renée Thomas.

Sheree is the author of Sleeping Under the Tree of Life and her work is spun through with silver threads of magic, transformation and a kind of ‘lost knowing’, memories, dreams and instincts simmering just behind our eyes.

I genuinely couldn’t be happier that she chose to include Prism in the edition as the Gemini entry, and it can’t be denied that greater forces than mere luck were at work to make this happen. Not only was Apex the very first publication I submitted Prism to, but when Sheree got back in touch to ask for some structural tweaking before deciding whether or not it would get published, I discovered one of my favourite authors Cody Goodfellow had just announced his proof-reading services via Fiverr.

I literally had a window of a week to swallow my pride, submit the story for some “ruthless proof-reading” then delve back in and make the necessary changes. Having someone who knows the weird fiction industry inside out like Cody was an invaluable help. His feedback was indeed thorough, insightful and spot on. I think I actually squeaked in delight when he sent me some feedback and said there was “a bright pulsing vein” in my work.

PRISM is essentially a story about finding yourself (aren’t they all though?) and without wanting to give too much away I began writing it on the Hawkwind tour bus one twilight hour many moons ago. I wanted to translate some of the experiences I had whilst performing onstage and push it a step beyond. I feel like the gig scene in Prism is one of the most powerful I written and I’m really really proud of it. The story also started as a kind of homage to Caitlin R. Kiernan, one of my other all-time favourite authors as I wanted to work with an unreliable narrator in an abstract fantasy dreamscape.

16996709_1648001978836770_427943735_n — Onstage with Hawkwind during the “Warriors on the Edge of Time” tour

Read PRISM for yourself, let me know what you think or listen the audio version which the Apex team have done an amazing job of producing.

And here’s a piece of artwork by the incredible Marta Nael that I obsessed over for a while whilst writing it, I’m sure you can see why.

Ode to Lilith ~ לויתן

April 29, 2018January 29, 2019 Stefanie ElrickLeave a comment

לויתן

Leviathan, lay down with me

And salt these wounds to help them heal,

Pluck out these eyes that I might see

With oiled split-tongue, I welcome thee.

Once you dwelt inside the garden,

Before the flood, before the Fall,

Before the weight of Sin was all

And body begged no pardon.

In squirming bliss you sought a throne,

A pinnacle of flesh and bone,

A sword to pierce the blackest void,

Exalting all who came inside.

And yet, your gift, mistook for pride,

Would be the fruit He cast aside.

Yet not you wept, nor did you pine,

You left His bliss to bathe in brine,

And sought new mates to sate your lust,

In shifting beds of ocean crust.

The creatures of the mud and sea,

And all that creepeth called you Queen.

A Queen indeed, with horn’d crown,

You bled them as you pulled them down.

You claimed and drained whilst searching for

A holy love with fire and ore.

Oh Goddess of the roiling Sea

Cast out your net and come for me.

Beyond the walls, outside of Eden,

Your Kingdom comes in waves of freedom.

Stefanie Elrick to perform at ‘Making The Strange Familiar’ by Instigate Arts to launch the Wonder Women Festival 2017 on March 2nd at Manchester Art Gallery

February 27, 2017 Stefanie ElrickLeave a comment

Instigate Arts

16996709_1648001978836770_427943735_n Making The Strange Familiar, curated by Instigate Arts as part of the Wonder Women festival launch at Manchester Art Gallery on Thursday 2nd March will see Stefanie Elrick bring her unique and dramatic performance art to the Thursday audience.

Stefanie Elrick is an artist, dancer and word weaver from Manchester, UK. She has toured the world producing psychedelic stage shows for the likes of Hawkwind, The Levellers and Peaches Christ and performed endurance-testing pieces such as ‘Written in Skin’ and ‘KAIROS’ (www.writteninskin.com & www.kairosophy.com). Her practice is immersed in magic, ritual and embodiment. She writes fantasy horror and has lectured on performance art and feminism in Universities across the UK.

16976187_1648001985503436_473541085_n

Launching the 2017 festival, Instigate Arts takes over Manchester Art Gallery for a special one-night-only event called Making The Strange Familiar inspired by the exhibition Strange and Familiar, a portrait of modern Britain as seen through the…

View original post 107 more words

Wonder Women Festival – Manchester

February 27, 2017February 27, 2017 Stefanie ElrickLeave a comment

From the 2nd – 12th of March Manchester’s many theatres, galleries and clubs will be flooded with artists, activists and creators celebrating just what it means to be a woman. Documentary films about Rebel Dykes, all female techno nights and a huge range of performance and art are on the bill. Could you love Manchester any more?!

This bold inspiring festival (which sounds to me like a direct challenge to own your own wondrousness) is a creative countdown to the 100yr anniversary of women winning the partial vote in 1918. Manchester has always been full of forward-thinking fire-crackers, none so much as Emily Pankhurst who was of course, born and bred on the mean streets of Mosside.

The festival poses the question, just how far have we actually come in the past 100yrs and it’s an honour to be invited by Instigate Arts to explore the theme not once but twice throughout the festival.

At the festival’s free launch night ‘Making The Strange Familiar with Instigate Arts’ on Thurs 2nd March I will perform The Art of Reflection at Manchester Art Gallery, a piece first created for the Trans-State conference last year. I describe this piece as a dance-based mirror ritual exploring identity and it’s construction and have integrated a lot of my own magical practices into it. I’m also in the middle of writing my next short story, which is about a woman consumed by a hungry mirror, so there’s certainly a theme bubbling away in my work!

I believe the body is the most powerful tool of expression, for a woman to be dancing freely (outside the confines of some shady establishment) would have alone been dangerous in centuries past! The body also provides a perfect canvas for people’s expectations, which I personally delight in subverting. The Art of Reflection plays with ideas of self-invention and transformation and has a soundtrack that slaloms through the Sex Pistols, to Garbage to Bjork (allowing me to shake out all my crazy energy and channel it healthily!) This piece’s pretty risky climax can’t be practiced or rehearsed, so how it ends is just as much of a surprise to me as my audience. Come and see! The event is open to the public and begins at 5:30pm.

IMAGE BY LAURA WILLIAMS

Then on the 3rd March at the Royal Exchange I will perform a pure movement piece called ’21st Century Witchcraft’ in the Dolly Mixtures showcase at The Royal Exchange theatre. This cabaret style event is a brilliant place to revive a performance I first created for A Queer Review in collaboration with the wonderful Greg Thorpe. The piece responds to a 7min monologue from Anohni (of Anthony and the Johnsons) in which transgressive bodies, witch craft and the feminisation of religious icons are discussed.

Last time I performed this piece I was told by my partner that I looked like a “sexy mental patient” – probably one of the most honest and accurate critiques I’ve ever been given. Other beautiful weirdos like Rosie Garland, Jane Bradey and Trish Dee are also on the bill that night, so there’s certainly no shortage of wild inspiring women! Tickets available here.

The Wonder Women festival has been made possible by the People’s History Museum and Creative Tourist. Read the full festival line-up here.

Performing ‘reinState’ – A Mirror Ritual at Trans-States

September 21, 2016April 30, 2018 Stefanie Elrick1 Comment

A week ago I performed at the Trans-States conference, an interdisciplinary event examining ‘The Art of Crossing Over’. Despite it being the conference’s first year it attracted a huge number of internationally based scholars, artists and magical practitioners eager to communicate and cross-pollinate.

Image by Marco Visconti

Highlights for me included Patricia McCormack’s keynote talk discussing ‘mucosal beginnings’ and monstrous desire in Lovecraft and popular culture and Alan Moore’s call to go forth and infuse magic back into our cultural imagination through art.

I discussed’Written in Skin : Flesh as A Language Frontier,’ framing mine and Loren’s performance project against Helen Cixous’s essay ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ and was scheduled to perform ‘reinState’ with Laura McGee. After finding out last minute that Laura couldn’t make it, with only a couple of weeks to reformulate something dealing with trans-states, identity and ‘crossing over’, I had to work fast to conceptualise something new.

The original reinState performance, still to be performed on the 8th Oct at HOME Mcr, hinged on the idea of two people meeting, fusing and then ‘reinstating’ themselves through dance. Performing this alone would have been impossible and so I conceived a way of doubling myself, still keeping the ‘restoration of an identity’ idea key.

stefanie-elrick-trans-states-reinstate-mirror-ritual-4

stefanie-elrick-trans-states-reinstate-mirror-ritual-5

On holiday in magical Wales I had an image of myself surrounded by a circle of mirrors, with a large full length in the centre. The mirrors were clearly markers of the four directions and the mirror in the centre represented myself. I kept coming back to the world ‘reinState’, defined as restoring something to it’s former power, and it became clear that before something could be reinstated it first needs to be changed or broken down in some way. The verb itself indicates a shift of power, something that has been removed or disrupted, being given back.

I started to play with the idea of a person who has never seen their reflection in a mirror before, like a child or an animal or someone stepping back into consciousness after a long period of mental disorientation. I liked the idea of enacting the mirror stage, treating your reflection as something alien and then explored what it would be like to fall in love with this reflection and even to be rejected by it.

I put together a playlist of music that would be the guiding force to this mirror ritual and threw in all kinds of tracks from Public Image Ltd’s ‘Death Disco’ and ‘Fodderstompf’ to Tom Waits ‘Hell Broke Luce’. Through this musical collage a story started to emerge; of awakening, of ‘coming back into’ my body, dancing, encountering the other, trying to befriend it, falling in love, becoming more and more frustrated as it remained cold and aloof and eventually destroying it.

The answer then became clear. I could reinstate my identity by reshaping the broken fragments in anyway I liked. I rebuilt a third entity, unlike myself or my reflection, a third person, an abstract deity and a consciousness beyond myself.

‘compenSate – The Politics of Competition’ Performance art by Stefanie Elrick & Laura McGee

September 19, 2016September 19, 2016 Stefanie Elrick1 Comment

A video has emerged of my durational dance piece ‘compenSate – The Politics of Competition’ commissioned by Instigate Arts and performed at HOME Mcr in July with Laura McGee. I must say, in my decade of performance, I don’t think we have ever looked more lithe or graceful in a more subtle piece of art…

Stef Elrick & Laura McGee ‘The Politics Of Competition/Compensate’ – Ambition from Instigate Arts on Vimeo.

We were asked to respond to the theme of “ambition” and decided to explore the way people try to gain social advantages or just attention through their looks. I think a healthy dose of ambition is often a good thing, it makes you get things done – it makes you start businesses, write books or create new pieces of art – but when it becomes a dominant unchecked force in your personality it can make people blinkered and distorted, a weird and often dangerous combination.

The beauty industry and fashion world is rife with blind ambition, alongside a lot of genuine ingenuity and creativity granted, but it’s definitely the dark side. Nicolas Winding Refn represents this beautifully in his controversial film Neon Demon which I absolutely loved (first film in a while with a final scene that left me speechless!) It’s a strange and alien world to me and so naturally, I’m fascinated.

I’m curious as to why men and women modify their bodies unnecessarily with face lifts, fake tan, injections in their saggy bits, skin bleaching, shaving off their own eyebrows and tattooing them on and countless other things I’ve probably never heard of to make bigger and better caricatures of their original selves.

compenSate sees two normal, healthy dancers competing for the attention of their audience. They begin plain and able bodied and through the course of their ridiculous and cumbersome alterations can no normal perform their choreography and become parodies of themselves.

The piece is hilarious and Laura and I had so much fun doing it. Thank you so much to Kevin and Anne for seeding the idea and giving us space to create. It even has a guest appearance by our very good friend Bren O’Callaghan.

So what do you think, is blind ambition a good thing?

Peaky Blinders meets a Village Fete – An Alternative Wedding of 3-Parts!

September 12, 2016 Stefanie ElrickLeave a comment

July – Sept is PEAK wedding season – so if you’re curious as to what I’ve been doing read more!

Alternative Weddings Manchester

July to August has been craaazy busy for Alternative Weddings Manchester and we faced our biggest challenge yet on Fri 5^th August – a wedding of three parts!

To understand this very special day first you need a bit of background info on the happy couple. John and Sophie are the masterminds behind Manchester’s coolest underground art event – Art Battle Manchester, bringing ‘Art for the People, by the People’. John and Sophie are all about creativity and expression and their lives are full of colourful characters, artists, good eggs and good vibes. This eclectic festival atmosphere was exactly what they wanted to share with their friends and family.

They had it all, literally, squeezing in a Humanist ceremony at Hallé St Peters in the afternoon, a thoroughly rustic feast at Hope Mill Theatre (provided by The Northern Pie Company and Taste the Love) and a Village fête / mini-festival in the evening with games, live art and…

View original post 254 more words

Clare and Gavin Worrall’s Socialist Shebang

August 17, 2016 Stefanie ElrickLeave a comment

When nearly every wedding shot looks like it could be an album cover, you know you’re doing a good job of creating Alternative Weddings.

Alternative Weddings Manchester

We all know the best things in life are worth waiting for – good food, fine wine, the loves of our lives and of course wedding pictures!

Huge thank you to Embee Photography who documented Clare and Gavin Worrall’s wedding and got some really brilliant snaps of the Bride and Groom strutting their stuff around Ancoats. We love it when wedding pictures look more like album covers and luckily our city is full of cool urban spots to make that happen!

Ancoats-Theatre-Photography-Manchester-Wedding-Photographer-Embee-Photography-Best-Photographer-Northwest_Stefanie-Elrick-Alternative-Weddings-Manchester-Wedding Planner (27)

Clare and Gavin’s wedding was planned by Alternative Weddings Manchester and held in July 2016 across two locations. They chose to hold their civil ceremony at the People’s History Museum and their meal and reception at Hope Mill Theatre in Ancoats, with catering by Samuel Tompkins and homemade gingerbread rum favors made by the Bride and Groom themselves.

Clare and Gavin were the loveliest couple who above all, wanted to have a laugh during their big day…

View original post 238 more words

Stef Elrick – ‘Ambition’ – Artist Q&A

June 30, 2016 Stefanie ElrickLeave a comment

Instigate Arts

On Saturday 9th July 2016, 6-9pm, Instigate Arts takes over the main gallery space at HOME in Manchester to host our ‘Ambition’ pop-up exhibition. In this series of Q&A’s we get a little more insight into what makes some some of the participating artists tick. Here we speak with artist, dancer and writer Stef Elrick:

Can you tell us about your practice?

I’m a dancer and performance artist who also dabbles in theatre and fiction writing. I love all forms of expression (although I’m terrible at fine art!!) I love embodying concepts in my work, creating visercal experiences that aim to push myself, and my audience, into new patterns of thinking. If I’m learning something new about myself I’m almost certain the audience will be learning something too.

How does your work relate to the themes of Ambition?

compenSATE looks at the way we consciously and subconsciously compete with each through the…

View original post 290 more words

“Put on your red shoes and dance the blues”

June 28, 2016September 21, 2016 Stefanie ElrickLeave a comment

I’m not going to lie, it’s been a surreal week here in the (arguably) united UK. The atmosphere is unstable and navigating through the media shit-storm proceeding the EU referendum – and it’s very real cultural aftermath – has felt like wading through treacle. You can feel the tremors everywhere, internally and externally and the worrying thing is that I’m not even sure if the real earthquake has hit.

I may be wrong, I’d really like to be.

On the positive side I’m very lucky to be surrounded by gifted and pro-active people, Manchester is a magnet for human diamonds. Kevin Burke and Anne-Louise Kershaw from Instigate Arts are two such hardworking gems and have commissioned a dance piece from Laura and I called compenSATE, which we’ll be performing at HOMEMcr in the galleries on the 9th July alongside Kevin Burke, Bartosz Beda, Michelle Hannah, Richard Hughes, Sara Minelli & Hyunjoo Kim,Emily Mulenga, Greg Thorpe, Angela Readman, Louise Woodcock.

compenSATE responds to the theme of ‘Ambition’ and is a 2hr dance piece that examines the way we compete. For 2hrs Laura and I will explore beautification rituals, suggesting that these look-enhancing treatments are really homogenising the mainstream. The exhibition is free and open between 6pm – 9pm.

We’ve also been rehearsing for Christopher Bowles’s new play AUTOPSY, a dark and ambitious piece of theatre exploring our relationships with our bodies. Laura again is on-board and we’re been choreographing surreal mirrored sequences for a number of the scenes.

Christoper Bowles of Magpie Man Theatre is such a talented writer and director and since he ‘came out’ on the literary circuit last year he’s been taking it by storm. It’s a pleasure to work with him, even if he did script that I get dribbled on by one of my ‘clients.’ In the original version I got my feet cut off too, so I supposed things could be worse. He’s also turned all the cast into corpses for the show promo posters. I think I make quite a charming cadaver!

Yesterday I worked again with Kevin Burke on one of his personal projects -‘The Measure of Hope’ – which will also be screened as part of the Instigate exhibition at HOMEMcr. Like the best of all things the timing of this collaboration was impeccable.

After a weekend of restless fidgety energy, feeling frustrated and unsure but trying to stay positive, I had so much conflicting stuff waiting to be released. Of all the dance pieces I’ve choreographed this was the most unexpectedly intense. I had a few rough ideas of movement I’d like to integrate, and we’d discussed the theme of the piece (the evolution of civilisation and ambiguity of ‘progress’) beforehand, but we basically just booked a space and launched straight in. No fuss, no frills, just the body responding to sound.

The track itself changes a lot in seven minutes and there’s a really chaotic section in the middle followed by a beautifully gentle piano ending. As we repeated the track and I free-flowed in response, I found myself releasing more and more of the pent up frustration and anger that I had ignored all wkend, until the dance became more like a protest or an exorcism. I literally pulled and slapped and stomped and cried the anger out of my system, before reining it back in delicately and regaining control of my body.

Kevin is a great director encouraging me to perform the piece repeatedly until all my energy was spent and I couldn’t physically do anymore. I went home afterwards and collapsed into bed for 4hrs. Today my body feels battered and bruised but I know I’ve regained some sense of the balance I lost last week.

It reminded me that dance is such a powerful tool, especially when you do it for yourself, when it isn’t a performance for someone else’s pleasure. For too many years dance became very much like work for me and I forgot why I started in the first place. I danced as a teenager to switch my brain off, I danced myself into oblivion because I could lose control then regain myself in an energetic reset. I danced to reconnect and ground myself and I danced to find an expression for all those wordless things that rocketed round my body, manifesting as panic, simply needing to be released. It’s not a solution to every problem but it’s an amazing coping mechanism, such a simple technique that I think we take for granted and we will very much need in the years to come.