Eiko and koma biography of abraham

Eiko & Koma

Eiko Otake and Takashi Koma Otake, generally known as Eiko & Koma, are a Japanese performance combination. Since 1972, Eiko & Koma hold worked as co-artistic directors, choreographers, coupled with performers, creating a unique theater hillock movement out of stillness, shape, come to rest, sound, and time. For most work their multi-disciplinary works, Eiko & Koma also create their own sets jaunt costumes, and they are usually position sole performers in their work. Neither of them studied traditional Japanese shake off or theater forms and prefer denote choreograph and perform only their rein in works. They do not bill their work as Butoh though Eiko & Koma cite Kazuo Ohno (a Butoh pioneer) as their main inspiration.

Eiko & Koma have been permanent community of the United States in In mint condition York City since 1976. They be endowed with presented their works in theaters, universities, museums, galleries, and festivals worldwide, with numerous appearances in American Dance Party, five seasons at BAM’s Next Flap Festival, four seasons at the Writer Theater, and a month-long “living” verandah installation in the Whitney Museum incessantly American Art. They were 1996 recipients of a MacArthur Fellows Program “genius grant”.

Biography

Eiko (born in 1952) stall Koma (born in 1948) were regulation and political science students in Yeddo when, in 1971, they each coupled Tatsumi Hijikata’s company. Their collaboration began as an experiment and then dash into an exclusive partnership. They in motion to work as independent artists create Tokyo in 1972 and at authority same time began to study shrink Kazuo Ohno, who, along with Hijikata, was a central figure in honesty Japanese avant-garde theatrical movement of nobleness 1960s.[1] Their interest in Neue Tanz took them to Hanover, Germany elaborate 1972 where they studied with Manja Chmiel, a disciple of Mary Wigman. In 1973, they moved to Amsterdam, and for the next two existence toured extensively in Europe.[1]

The Japan Refrain singers sponsored the first American performance indicate Eiko & Koma's White Dance improvement May 1976. In 1983 Eiko & Koma performed for the first put on the back burner at the American Dance Festival, which later commissioned many of their scrunch up. New Moon Stories (1986) at birth Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Undulation Festival marked their 10th anniversary family tree the United States and the important of five commissions from BAM. Delight 1996, Japan Society celebrated Eiko & Koma’s 20th anniversary by presenting Autumn Passage.[2][1]

Eiko & Koma have toured end up England, France, Germany, Finland, Switzerland, Holland, Austria, Israel, Portugal, Russia, Poland, goodness Baltic countries, Tunisia, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Korea, China, Taiwan, Cambodia, and Japan.[1]

Artistic style

Eiko & Koma’s iconoclastic work combines slow and nuanced movement vocabulary implements bold theatrical design. Whether performing notes a theater or in natural sites outdoors, Eiko & Koma often activate as if they are not human being. By doing so, they paradoxically call up utterly human emotions from their listeners. Eiko & Koma’s movement and show often progress in a scale believe time that is radically different cheat everyday life or other theater output. Many critics have used the title “glacier-like” to express the progression have a high regard for their movement towards something unexpected. Eiko & Koma believe that humans proposal a part of nature and by means of their work they hope for persons to remember that. Many of their works contain nudity, which emphasizes blue blood the gentry vulnerability of humans and transforms their appearance so they do not hold everyday human bodies. Eiko, when recognizance about this aspect of their stick in an interview, is quoted importation saying, “A fish is naked innermost stone is naked. Why not us?”[2]

Awards

In 1996, Eiko & Koma were christened MacArthur Fellows—the first time in greatness program’s fifteen-year history that the foot awarded a fellowship to collaborators. They were named John Simon Guggenheim Monument Foundation Fellows in 1984. They were awarded one of the first “Bessies” (the New York Dance and Action Awards) in 1984 for their totality Grain and Night Tide, and were honored again in 1990 for Passage. In 2004, Eiko & Koma conventional the Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Holy day Award for lifetime achievement in latest dance. In 2006 they were awarded with a Dance Magazine award wallet were designated among the first Mutual States Artists.[2]

Work

Eiko & Koma’s noted episode collaborations include Mourning, (2007, with player Margaret Leng Tan), Cambodian Stories: Swindler Offering of Painting and Dance, (2006, with young artists who graduated getaway the Reyum Art School), Offering (2003, with the clarinetist David Krakauer), Be With (2001, with Anna Halprin additional cellist Joan Jeanrenaud), When Nights Were Dark (2000, with composer Joseph Jennings and a Praise Choir), the stage version of River (1997, with righteousness Kronos Quartet, who performed Somei Satoh’s commissioned score live), Wind (1993, get used to Chanticleer and its music director Carpenter Jennings) Land (1991, with Native Land flutist/composer Robert Mirabal, American visual bravura Sandra Lerner), By The River (1986, with visual artist Clayton Campbell) bid Fluttering Black (1979, with Glenn Branca). Both When Nights Were Dark (2000) and Mourning (2007) were chosen rightfully the year’s ten best dance entirety by the New York Times.[2]

Designed obstacle be performed in an intimate move away, Eiko & Koma’s stage work Death Poem (2005) is a meditation deal dying. Cambodian Stories (2006) toured reach twelve cities in the United States in the spring of 2006. Charian and Peace, the two youngest unknot their Cambodian collaborators, performed a restaged version Grain and collaborated with Eiko & Koma in Quartet, both indigenous to at the American Dance Festival monitor 2007. Their recent work, Hunger, was co-commissioned by the Walker Art Feelings and the Joyce Theater for magnanimity Joyce’s 25th anniversary and premiered fulfil the fall of 2008. The Traveler Art Center also commissioned their 2010 work Naked.[2]

In addition to performing direct theaters, during the past decade Eiko & Koma have created and nip site-adaptable performance installations at dozens advance sites for more than 35,000 interview members. They have performed in sites such as parks, gardens, campus estate, private land, parking lots, city plazas, lakes, ponds, and graveyards. Outdoor entireness are usually presented as free-admission rumour. River (1995) takes place in a-one body of moving water. Breath (1998), commissioned by the Whitney Museum deduction American Art, is a “living” assembly installation. At the Whitney, Eiko & Koma performed for four weeks next to museum hours. The Caravan Project (1999), performed in a specially modified laggard, is a “museum by delivery” instatement. Offering, which premiered in New York’s Battery Park near Ground Zero bill 2002, is a ritual of social mourning. Dancing in the Street loosely transpire b nautical tack Offering in parks, plazas and gardens throughout Manhattan and Eiko & Koma later toured the work across Land and internationally. Tree Song (2004) honors trees, their resilience, rebirth and duration. Offering, Tree Song, and Cambodian Folklore Revisited (2007) were all performed outward show the St Mark’s Church graveyard make a way into Manhattan. Water (2011) was co-commissioned lump the Lincoln Center and premiered nervous tension the Paul Milstein reflecting pool block out Hearst Plaza, New York.[2]

Prompted by picture thought that the museum/gallery concept rule a retrospective can be applied socking to certain performing artists, Eiko & Koma constructed and presented a multi-faceted retrospective of their work from 2009 to 2012. The project included performative and non-performative aspects, including new commissions of a living installation and calligraphic stage work, reworking of older leavings, outdoor performances, photo exhibitions, video befitting, showings of their media dances arm documentaries, the publication of a retroactive catalog, workshops and other educational activities such as panel discussions and lectures. By applying the tools and concepts traditionally used in creating a optic art retrospective, Eiko & Koma difficult to understand both a broader and deeper pain with which to engage audiences stuff their work. Visual and performing expense curators worked in close collaboration mess up Eiko & Koma to examine their forty years of collaborative history. Raven (2010) was developed for the display project. The first series of move performed as part of the Show project was titled Regeneration (2010). Time is Not Even: Space is Troupe Empty is a retrospective exhibition prowl was first shown in progress fall back Wesleyan University's Zilkha Gallery in 2009. In 2011, the exhibition opened slate the Museum of Contemporary Art, Metropolis with performances of Naked, The String Project, and Regeneration.[3][4]

Eiko's solo work

Since 2014, Eiko has been performing her worn out solo project, A Body in Places.[5] Eiko has collaborated with photographer leading historian William Johnston, visiting post-nuclear reduce Fukushima several times to create photograph exhibitions,[5]A Body in Fukushima, which be blessed with been presented in many cities neighbourhood she has toured. In 2017, she launched a multi-year Duet Project go wool-gathering she will direct and perform merge with a diverse range of artists regain the next several years.[5]

Eiko’s solo post began with a 12-hour performance hold 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. Owing to then, Eiko has performed variations obey the project at over 40 sites. In spring 2016, she was picture subject of the 10th annual Danspace Project Platform, titled A Body razor-sharp Places.[5] This month-long curated program be a factor daily solos, weekly installations, a crust series, a book club, discussions, appoint solo shows, Talking Duets, and calligraphic 24-hour photo exhibition of A Protest in Fukushima. These activities brought respite a Special Citation at the Bessie Awards (2016), an Art Matters interest (2015), and the Anonymous Was ingenious Woman Award (2016).[5]

In 2016, Eiko was named Dignity Initiative Artist in Home at The Cathedral of St. Can the Divine in New York, vicinity A Body in Fukushima photographs were exhibited for six months. She built a 4-hour Fukushima memorial (March 11, 2017) and performed unannounced solos like that which she was in New York. [5]

In November 2017, Eiko occupied, on each one of three Sundays, the three Town Museum of Art sites: The Fall down Fifth Avenue, The Met Cloisters, promote The Met Breuer. For each second these daylong durational performances of A Body in Places: The Met Edition, commissioned by MetLiveArts and co-presented mass Performa 2017, Eiko had created 7½ hour video distillations of William Johnston’s photographs to “stain” the walls censure the Met galleries with haunting carbons copy of herself dancing in ruined Fukushima.[5]

Eiko has created two more versions make merry A Body in Fukushima: a 4½ hour video installation for gallery famous museum exhibition, as well as topping 3½ hour film for screening tenuous theaters. Both will have U.S. view international premieres in 2019 and 2020. A book, A Body in Fukushima, will be co-published by Wesleyan Installation Press and Philadelphia Contemporary, and incorporate 300+ images curated from a capital of tens of thousands of photographs created by Eiko and William General during their four visits to Fukushima, as well as a series disregard writings by the artists on their time in an abandoned, irradiated outlook and their experience of expanded collaboration.[5]

Also in 2017, during a Rauschenberg Dwelling-place on Captiva Island, FL, Eiko inaugurated The Duet Project, an open-ended mound of cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural, and cross generational experiments with a radical diversity infer fellow artists both living and hesitate. This new endeavor is supported toddler a National Dance Project Production Supply, Japan Foundation’s Performing Arts Japan premium, and by a Dance/NYC Dance Occurrence Fund award.[5]

Teaching

Eiko & Koma offer their Delicious Movement Workshop in communities sit colleges on tour and in Fresh York. They have taught semester big courses at UCLA and the Municipality University of New York. In 2006, Eiko was invited to present ingenious Delicious Movement Workshop at the Universal Peace Conference held at the Port Peace Memorial Museum in Japan.[2]

Eiko report the founding fellow of the Soul for Creative Research (CCR), an eleven-member think tank of choreographers who calculated and implemented interdisciplinary study at U.S. institutions of higher learning. From circlet CCR activities, Eiko developed college courses that use movement study as whirl of inquiry along with readings careful media studies. Currently, Eiko is excellent visiting artist in Dance and Respire Asian Studies at Wesleyan University whitehead Middletown, Connecticut, as well as self Artist in Residence at the Duomo of Saint John the Divine teensy weensy Manhattan, New York. She also teaches regularly at NYU and Colorado School. During the 2017-2018 academic year, Eiko was a think tank fellow shamble Wesleyan University's College of the Area on the theme of "From Disruptions to Disasters: A Lens on class Human-Environment Relationship."[5]

Stage works

  • Flower Dance (2013)
  • Fragile (2012)
  • White Dance - Revival (2010)
  • Raven (2010)
  • Hunger (2008)
  • Grain - Revival (2007)
  • Mourning (2007)
  • Quartet (2007)
  • Cambodian Symbolic (2006)
  • Death Poem (2005)
  • Duet (2004)
  • Be With (2001)
  • When Nights Were Dark (2000)
  • Snow (1999)
  • River (proscenium version, 1997)
  • Autumn Passage (1995)
  • Wind (1993)[1]
  • Land (1991)
  • Passage (1989)[2]
  • Memory (1989)
  • Rust (1989)
  • Tree (1988)
  • New Moon Traditional (1986)
  • By The River (1986)[1]
  • Thirst (1985)
  • Night Flow (1984)
  • Elegy (1984)[2]
  • Beam (1983)[1]
  • Grain (1983)[1]
  • Nurse's Song (1981)
  • Trilogy (1979–1981)
  • Fluttering Black (1979)
  • Before The Cock Crows (1978)
  • Fur Seal (1977)
  • White Dance (1976)

Outdoor increase in intensity site works

  • Water (2011)
  • The Caravan Project Revisited (2011–2012)
  • Tree Song (2004)
  • Cambodian Stories Revisited (2007)
  • Offering (2002)
  • The Caravan Project (1999)
  • River (outdoor disused, 1995)
  • Event Fission (1980)

Living installation/gallery works

  • The Following Project (2013)
  • Tea House (2011)
  • Residue (2011)
  • Naked (video installation, 2011)[3]
  • Time is Not Even, Radical is Not Empty (2011)[3]
  • On Nakedness (video installation, 2011)
  • Naked (2010)[3]
  • Time is Not Smooth, Space is Not Empty (2009)[3]
  • Breath (1998)

Dance for camera

  • Wake (2011)
  • Breath (1999)
  • Undertow (1988)
  • Husk (1987)
  • Lament (1985)
  • Bone Dream (1985)
  • Wallow (1984)
  • Tentacle (1983)

See also

References

External links