Last winter, artists Sonya Belaya and Eryka Dellenbach, whose work intersects in the probing of female relationships, set out to visualize Mother Sparrow, a song written by Belaya describing the metaphysical reality of her mother’s disappearance five years ago. At the banks of Moodna Creek—a tributary of the Hudson River designated by the Daughters of the American Revolution—Dellenbach directed a film with an all-female crew starring K.J. Holmes, Nola Sporn Smith, as well as Dellenbach, with cinematography by Carmen Hilbert. Choreography sourced from Make the Brutal Tender, Dellenbach’s ongoing performance project that explores female conflict and sensuality, is invoked to examine relationships subsequent to a maternal absence that continues establishing itself. Two worlds and three women are positioned and repositioned between poles of blood and chosen family, prophecy and hallucination, agency and observance and cycles of haunting and return.

Mother Sparrow emerged as a single tributary from artists Sonya Belaya’s and Eryka Dellenbach’s distinct bodies of work. As a tribute to the shepherding of their collaboration, the film will have its world premiere at Roulette in the company of live music performance by Belaya’s ensemble Dacha and a live dance performance of Make the Brutal Tender by Nola Sporn Smith and Dellenbach.