Blog: Eiko Otake

Here is a conversation about art as experience and as a form of thinking predicated on the agency of those who touch it.

You Are Not Me

May 30, 2018

  I am at The Yard this month, a performance residency center in Chilmark, Massachusetts which is on the sparsely populated end of Martha’s Vineyard. I don’t get cell phone reception but there is Wi-Fi in the rustic house with dancers tucked away in bedrooms with bunk beds on one end and the busy Yard…

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Echo

May 27, 2018

    Today I’m writing in response to Sarah Marks Mininsohn’s recent writing about “An Echo Score” on the Headlong Performance Institute Community blog page. Sarah describes a score that she and Shreshth Khilani created as they explore a new iteration of Cabbage Head in her West Philly attic with new collaborators. In the score, people…

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River Charrette Video

April 16, 2018

    Jillian Jetton and I have been working with Byron Karabotsos on a video about the four River Charrette events that functioned in relationship to the three phases of weekly events at the Washington Avenue Pier. In looking through this footage I was moved by just how much happened, and the hugely different expressions…

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Eiko Otake & Ishmael Houston-Jones

March 10, 2017

  Eiko Otake and Ishmael Houston Jones are dance artists whose dancing, choreography, writing and teaching are perhaps more relevant now than at any time in their 40 years of making performance. I am fortunate to spend time with them as they agitate and advise The Quiet Circus a weekly public performance that takes place…

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River Charrette #1: Eiko Otake and Alan Greenberger at Bartram’s Garden

September 20, 2016

  Please join us at Bartram’s Garden this Saturday, September 24th at 2:30 pm for The Quiet Circus: River Charrettes, a collaborative project by Headlong and Philadelphia Contemporary to engage and explore the city’s maritime, industrial, and creative heritage. Eiko Otake, an artist whose work and ideas are a profound touchstone for me, will perform…

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Eiko Otake and the Limit of Imagination

February 19, 2016

  I am writing again about Eiko Otake. If you were lucky enough to see her perform in Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station last year, you know how special the ongoing work, A Body in Places, is. You can read more about Eiko in earlier posts, Eiko Otake and the Politics of Hesitation and Time is…

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Time Is Not Even

October 23, 2014

  Time is not even.  Welcome to the second letter in a series I am writing about my recent conversations with Eiko Otake, whose last of four performances is tomorrow night, Friday, October 24 from 9pm to midnight at Amtrak’s 30th Street Station in Philadelphia.  It will be a haunting time to observe a rare…

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Eiko Otake and the Politics of Hesitation

January 10, 2014

  I want to share with you the work and ideas of performance artist Eiko Otake of Eiko and Koma.  For me, they have long been a beacon of alternative ideas about the body in dance. Their performances, which often take place in striking visual settings, both found and designed, rejoice in a choreography thick…

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