Erika Batdorf has been performing, directing, choreographing, animating art openings and creating award winning performance work since 1983. Her work has appeared in Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Finland, Denmark, Italy, Switzerland, Korea, Indonesia, Georgia and 14 US states in such places as the Smithsonian Institute, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Harvard University, Movement Theatre Festivals in NY, Philadelphia and New Hampshire, the Boston Center for the Arts and many New York City and Toronto venues including Luminato. She has had 4 Dora nominations and two shows she created/directed with The Thistle Project made the top 10 theatrical productions of the year in NOW Magazine in Toronto (2006 and 2010). Last year she performed SOS! The Smell of the Soul, with musical duo Arwinda in Tblisi, Munich and Jakarta and October 2015 in Toronto. She released an album, Inhale, and did several concerts with Lisa Schamberger in Munich spring 2015 and performed her latest performance/installation Burnish in the 56th Venice Biennale and at The Theatre Centre, and was presented there again in Summerworks 2016 this past August and SBCAST in Santa Barbara this winter. She choreographed the award wining The Living by Colleen Wagner summer 2015 for Summerworks, directed by Ines Buchli. She has been working as dramaturg with Lua Shayenne’s dance company on their piece, Hybrid. This spring Batdorf was Associate Director for the Polish premiere of We Keep Coming Back for Self-Conscious Theatre and performed her solo Poetic License this past November at Tata Literature Live! in Mumbai.
Batdorf teaches at York University in Toronto where she received the Faculty of Fine Arts Dean’s Senior Teaching Award (2010) and in 1996 was voted Most Outstanding Faculty at The Boston Conservatory where she taught for 12 years. She has been a guest teacher at universities internationally and is listed in the Who’s Who of American Teachers. She ran The Batdorf School for Movement Theatre in Boston for several years and currently runs the Batdorf Intensive annually in Toronto.