Dance

This lyrical piece celebrates the male body simply and elegantly. Its subject, Christophe, is exquisitely portrayed by the sepia-toned balletic video. Three men dressed in overcoats dance in and out of the frame in front of a mostly stationary camera. Occasionally they open or partially remove the overcoats to display beautifully sculpted male bodies.

Born and raised in Japan and a resident of New York since 1976, Eiko Otake is a movement-based, interdisciplinary artist. She worked for more than 40 years as Eiko & Koma, but since 2014 has been working on her own projects. Her works often investigate themes of death and dying, history, and the persistence of collective memory. Eiko has also broadened her collaborative practice to create interdisciplinary work with artists from different backgrounds and disciplines, both alive and deceased.

Inspired in part by the cover of "Megatron Man," Patrick Cowley's archetypal 80s disco album, Robot Love is a celebration of the playful, synthetic, party-driven, disposable culture of disco. The video is playful and opulent, presenting a night at the disco as a mind-expanding trip to an alternate universe.

Eiko edited this video to illuminate, in fast pace, her solo performance project A Body in Places. The red cloth she often uses in her performance is used as a visual link between different places and communities where Eiko performed.

This video-lament for Mother Earth is a collaboration among Jim Barbaro, sound; Tobe Carey, cinematography and video editing; and Brenda Hutchinson playing a long tube.

"Made right after Covid lockdown, my art gave me an opportunity to rejoice, grieve and sonically face impermanence via sounds and a Chicken Dance I’ve been performing for decades. The beauty of this video is that it looks like Chicken Linda can finally FLY!! Please interact if you wish and dance, sing, cry, and FLY HIGH."

–– Linda Mary Montano

A magnetic "dancing" ballerina toy, found by Bob, inspired this video of a real ballerina (Laurie McDonald) spinning as if the magnetic coils in an old black and white mid-century Setchell Carlson television monitor were controlling her movements.

Eiko's grandfather Chikuha Otake (1878–1936) was a praised figure in traditional Japanese painting. But his anti-mainstream sentiments were shunned by the field authorities. His reputation was severely damaged by his failed run for the House of Representatives. Filmed in 2018, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Suiboku Museum in Toyama, Japan, Eiko's edit combines videos of Chikuha's paintings and Eiko's performance with quotes from his essays and Eiko's musings.

Special thank you to David Brick, Ryohei Endo, Hiroyuku Horikawa, Feliece Fischer, and John Killacky.

Kuyenda N’kubvina looks at how thought and culture propagate in the slender nation of Malawi. Weaving our way through video halls, book stores, dance floors and radio stations, in cities and small villages, we meet Malawians who traffic in ideas, reflecting the rhythms of Malawian contemporary life. The video was instigated by the filmmaker’s relative ignorance about the people and culture of southeast Africa, and accompanies her as she seeks out individuals and infrastructures that channel and articulate Malawian identity.

In collaboration with Ishmael Houston-Jones.

On September 1, 2022, Eiko and Ishmael Houston-Jones performed in Beverly McIver's painting exhibition Full Circle, curated by Kim Boganey.

The whole event took place in connected galleries of her show, but this excerpt is when Ishmael and Eiko danced a duet in front of the paintings that were also a duet of a sort.

Camera by Julie Ganas.
Edited by Eiko Otake.

C.L.U.E. (color location ultimate experience), Part 1 is a collaborative video and performance work by artists A.L. Steiner and robbinschilds, with AJ Blandford and Seattle-based band Kinski. Inhabiting the intersection of human movement and architecture, A.L. Steiner and robbinschilds (Sonya Robbins and Layla Childs) present a full-spectrum video, set to a score by rock quartet Kinski.

Wind imagines a dying child, a common event until recently and still so in many parts of the world today. This was a collaboration with Chanticleer music director, Joseph Jennings, who arranged a composition by Robert Mirabal and Francisco Guerrero. It was performed live by Chanticleer in San Francisco and specially recorded for tour.  Eiko & Koma’s two sons, Yuta and Shin, both played the role of a boy in the piece. The floor was painted to look like a galaxy and white feathers fell from the ceiling, making a sense of wind visible. 

Introduces the audience to the rockin' talkin' pony, who provides musical accompaniment for a series of Texas country-dance lessons.

This title is also available on Ben Coonley: Trick Pony Trilogy.

Alex and José is a 16mm single channel projection that explores gender, movement and form.

Music: Zeena Parkins

Shot by Mary Curtis Ratclif at the O.K. Harris Gallery on Prince and Green Streets, New York, this tape focuses on performer “Ricky Jay” as he performs card tricks at his magic table for an enthusiastic audience.

Eiko performed unannounced in the Cathedral of St. John Divine, New York City as an artist in residence in 2016-2018.

Camera by Alexis Moh.

Lips that issue forth melodious vows. Warm skin on bedsheets stained with dreams. Faces crowned with halos that light a path to temples of the soul…..You will find it here in DREAMS and OMENS!

This title comprises Wishful Thinking (2015), Testimony (2013), and New Beginnings (2014) which were compiled into this form by Mike Kuchar in 2022.

The Dying Swan is a recreation of the acclaimed ballet — Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova's most famous role — borrowed from its theatrical context and taken back to the lake.  A frozen pond and fifteen-degree weather is the stage and setting for this version of the ballet, and the dancer (Laurie McDonald) in traditional costume of pointe shoes and tutu performs the death throes of the swan on the ice. The music is from "Carnival of the Animals" by Camille Saint-Saens.

Assisted by Alan Powell.

M+ Museum presented A Body in Hong Kong in two locations as part of Mobile M+: Live Art, 2015. The second site she chose and performed at on December 11 and 12, 2015 was the West Kowloon Cultural District, the site where the M+ Museum would be built. Eiko perhaps covered a longer distance in this performance than any other in the past. This raw landscape, rather unusual in Hong Kong, and its political tenderness play as a background of her performance. A Body in Hong Kong is part of Otake’s ongoing project, A Body in Places.

Home Exercises is a short dancefilm and hybrid documentary investigating the gestural habits and choreographies of aging individuals in their homes.

This title is also available as part the Movement Exercises trilogy.

Co-commissioned by the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago and Danspace Project, Death Poem is a meditation on dying. Eiko dances a long solo on a futon under a mosquito net, accompanied by the sound of insects and cicadas. Koma enters from another world and tries to bring Eiko back with him, but he leaves without her, as she is not yet ready to go.