Ephia  studied dance with Min Tanaka, Kazuo Ohno, Anzu Furukawa, and Akira Kasai in Japan. Following her interest in ritual dance, she travelled to study under renowned teachers in Ghana, Java and Bali. She holds a BFA in dance from Columbia University, New York City. She danced in the company of the late Anzu Furukawa in Berlin, appearing in Furukawa’s final production, GOYA: La Quinta del Sordo. In 1998, she co-founded Djalma Primordial Science, a performative and pedagogical collaboration with electro-acoustic musician Jeff Gburek. From within this partnership of listening, she focused her dance on the instability of the body and its relationship to the environment: her dancing body becomes a prosthesis for the viewer to discover the space that surrounds and composes us. 

Her productions “(MYOPIA)2” and “Mirrorminded Curiousitease” were presented in 2006 and 2008 at UNIDRAM festival (Potsdam). Since 2007, she participates in creations of the company SCOLOPENDRE which incorporate shadow work, object manipulation, mask and marionette. In 2009,  she joins Collectif Ishtar and her project entitled "CONTRE-IMAGE" was in residence at CCN Rillieux la Pape- Company Maguy Marin, MICADANSE and Atelier Carolyn Carlson in Paris. In 2011 she established Les Chercheurs de Djalma; this group of ten dancers meets regularly to distort the frontiers between individual and group, body and object, dream and daily reality.

Her workshops have been hosted by THE LAND/an art site (USA), Theater Training Initiative (London), Mime Centrum Berlin, Exploratorium Berlin, Antagon theaterAKTion (Frankfurt), Nordic School of Butoh (Copenhague), RAMDAM, Léthé Musicale et La Caravane des Dix Mots (Lyon.)

Visit www.envelopeproject.com to see VIDEO.

"I can highly recommend Ephia as a teacher of great integrity. Both the content she presented and her teaching style are very special. She is a generous teacher, offering clear guidance as well as space for each participant to pursue their own journey into the world of improvisation and transformation."-- Frances Barbe, London's Theater Training Initiative

"It may take an audience member a while to get used to this new language, but drinking in the syntax fundamentally alters the way you breathe, the way you are… This work doesn’t try to make friends; it is exactly what it is, just as a hurricane or an oil spill is what it is. Ephia takes her body apart and puts it back together wrong, so that her hand receives the messages the spleen was supposed to get, so that the eyes are in the soles of the feet, leaving her blind and trembling. Captivated, we follow her on this journey across the room, and back again, and across the room, and back again, because the journey is not through space but through states of being." ---Andrew Fearnside, Albuquerque Magazine

Jeff Gburek (co-founder) is a guitarist /electronic music composer/sound artist currently living in Poznan, Poland. He employs extended & prepared guitar techniques, signal processing, open source applications and phonography to create richly textural music, wherein extreme pianissimo, organic object manipulation and silence contrast energetic swells of excited electronics. To listen in visit  www.futurevessel.com/orphansound http://soundcloud.com/jeff-gburek  www.myspace.com/aenigmaplasme

EPHIA performs in COLLABORATION with...