This Friday at 7PM, discover the collaborative film “No Rule Is Our Rule” (2022) through an exclusive screening and discussion featuring Eiko Otake, who teaches an arts workshop “Delicious Movement” at NYU Gallatin each fall, and Wen Hui, an internationally acclaimed dance artist from China.

Open to NYU students only.

Gallatin School of Individualized Study (1 Washington Pl.)
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Eiko Otake - Interdisciplinary Artist ; Wen Hui - Choreographer, Dancer, Filmmaker

Wednesday, April 10, 2024 - 4:00pm

Auditorium
53 Wall Street
New Haven, CT 06511

This is a story of friendship between two independent female artists and their body memories each willingly carry. In January 2020, New York based, interdisciplinary performing artist Eiko Otake arrived in Beijing to visit Wen Hui, a Chinese choreographer and filmmaker. Eight years apart, Eiko grew up in postwar Japan and Wen during the Cultural Revolution. They planned to visit each other for a month to converse and collaborate. The surge of COVID-19 abruptly cut off Eiko’s visit and the pandemic has so far made Wen’s visit to the USA impossible but not the collaboration. Looking back on the video diaries they shot without a script, Eiko and Wen continued their dialogue on Zoom, sharing past works that form a deeper understanding of their circumstantial differences and characteristic similarities. Chinese film director Yiru Chen, once Eiko’s student, joined the team as a co-editor.

Directed by Wen Hui and Eiko Otake
Edited by Yiru Chen, Wen Hui, and Eiko Otake

Support for the artists and this event also came from The Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation and Duke University 

Yale MacMillan Center Council on East Asian Studies
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Film Screening and Discussion with Artists

Tuesday, April 9, 2024 at 7:30PM
Powell Family Cinema, Jeanine Basinger Center for Film Studies
Wesleyan University | 301 Washington Terrace | Middletown, CT
Free admission

No Rule is Our Rule
2023 / China/United States / 76 min
documentary
Directed and Produced,by Eiko Otake, Hui Wen
Edited by Yiru Chen, Eiko Otake, Hui Wen

This is a story of friendship between two independent female artists and the body memories each willingly carry. In January 2020, New York-based, interdisciplinary performing artist Eiko Otake arrived in Beijing to visit Wen Hui, a Chinese choreographer and filmmaker. Eight years apart in age, Eiko grew up in postwar Japan and Wen in China during the Cultural Revolution. They planned to visit each other for a month to converse and collaborate.  Yet the surge of COVID-19 abruptly cut off Eiko’s visit and the pandemic made Wen’s visit to the USA impossible—but not the collaboration. Looking back on the video diaries they shot without a script, Eiko and Wen continued their dialogue on Zoom, sharing past works that form a deeper understanding of their circumstantial differences and characteristic similarities. No Rule is Our Rule was selected for the Munich New Wave Film Festival and won Best Feature Documentary at Japan International Film Festival last year. 

Co-sponsored by Wesleyan University’s Allbritton Center, Center for the Arts, College of Film and the Moving Image, College of East Asian Studies, Dance Department, Fries Center for Global Studies, and Office of International Student Affairs. Hui Wen’s travel to the United States was supported in part by the Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation.

Wesleyan University

Artist-directors Wen Hui and Eiko Otake; moderated by Prof. Jingqiu Guan (Duke Dance Program)

NO RULE IS OUR RULE is a documentary film about the friendship between two fiercely independent, interdisciplinary female dance artists Eiko Otake and Wen Hui. Eiko grew up in postwar Japan and has lived in New York since the 1970s. 8 years younger, Beijing-based Wen Hui grew up during the Cultural Revolution in China and shows her work internationally. They spent a month together in China in January 2020, when the surge of COVID-19 became first known to the general public. Postponing their physical collaboration, Eiko and Wen Hui continued to converse candidly over Zoom and co-edited the footage they filmed in China. The process has deepened their mutual understanding of their past works created and presented in different historical and social contexts. Chinese film director Yiru Chen, once Eiko's student, joined the team as a co-editor.

NO RULE IS OUR RULE played at the Munich New Wave Film Festival and won Best Feature Documentary at the 2023 Japan International Film Festival.

-- Q&A to follow screening featuring artist-directors Wen Hui and Eiko Otake, moderated by Prof. Jingqiu Guan (Duke Dance Program) --

Duke University Asian/Pacific Studies Institute
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Artist Talk, Film Screening, and Q+A
7–8:30pm, Thursday, February 29th
Knowlton Hall rm 250
275 W Woodruff Ave, Columbus, OH 43210
Free & open to all!

Otake will be giving a performative artist talk at the Barnett Theatre, in Sullivant Hall.

Presented by The Ohio State Department of Art Visiting Artist Program in partnership with the Center for Ethnic Studies & The Ohio State Department of Dance.

Ohio State University

Join the Department of Performing and Media Arts on Saturday, February 17th for A Body in Places, a solo performance by artist Eiko Otake and a screening of No Rule is Our Rule followed by a Q&A. Free and open to all.

Performance: Saturday, Feb. 17 from 3:00 p.m. - 3:45 p.m., Mui Ho Fine Arts Library (2nd Floor, Rand Hall, 947 University Ave, Ithaca, NY)

Screening: Saturday, Feb. 17 from 7:00pm - 9:00 p.m., Film Forum, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts (430 College Ave, Ithaca, NY)

A Body in Places is a solo performance by internationally acclaimed Japanese-American movement-based interdisciplinary artist Eiko Otake. Performing alone in a public site, her body activates and disrupts particular places. In turn, each place offers a different focus and meaning to her choreography. The project began with a 12-hour performance at Philadelphia's 30th Street Station. Since then, Eiko has created variations of A Body in Places as place-specific work and performed at over 70 sites, including three different buildings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In addition, Eiko has performed in many locations of post-nuclear meltdown Fukushima for her multi-year work A Body in Fukushima, her collaboration with historian and photographer William Johnston. The project has produced exhibitions, screenings, lectures, and performances, a photography book, and a feature-length documentary that premiered in MoMA in 2022. "With A Body in Places, I have always imagined digging a hole through the earth to connect each of my performance sites with Fukushima. I want to let my audiences see, among the bodies of the other viewers, my immigrant body carrying Fukushima tucked inside it," explains Eiko. At Cornell, Eiko will perform A Body in a Library in the remarkable Mui Ho Fine Arts Library, intimately conversing with the library's books and architecture, as well as its visitors. In the past, she performed in public libraries in Middletown, CT; Toronto, Canada; Pittsfield, MA; and Durham and Raleigh, NC.

"A library is a quiet place. Dance is a visual and kinesthetic art, so seeing me there, silence could become more visible and profound." — Eiko Otake

No Rule is Our Rule is a 76-minute documentary film about the friendship of two fiercely independent, interdisciplinary Asian female dance artists, Eiko Otake and Wen Hui. Following Eiko’s two-week visit to China in January 2020, their collaboration and subsequent conversations delve into their lives in post-WII Japan and the Occupation and China's Cultural Revolution, respectively, and their distinct cultural memories that intersect in the shared trauma of the Sino-Japanese War and the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in China. No Rule is Our Rule is in collaboration with director Yiru Chen and won Best Feature Documentary at the Japan International Film Festival in 2023. The film screening will be immediately followed by an Artist Q&A Session, culminating the daylong event series.

Cornell University Department of Performing & Media Arts
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Dance On Camera and Film at Lincoln Center (FLC) present the 52nd edition of the Dance on Camera Festival from February 9 to 12, 2024. The four-day festival features 11 programs with a total of 36 films selected from countries around the globe, including eight world premieres, five North American premieres, two U.S. premieres, and more than 10 New York premieres. Dance on Camera Festival, the longest-running dance film festival in the world, takes place at Film at Lincoln Center with programming organized by the nonprofit organization, Dance On Camera.

“The 52nd Dance on Camera Festival invites New York audiences to traverse a rich, international tapestry of dance films that transcend time, style, and form while celebrating innovative artists and stories,” said co-curator Michael Trusnovec. “We’re thrilled to share classical grace alongside the vitality of contemporary expression with all those who seek the beauty of dance, old and new.”

The festival is programmed by the Dance Films Association.

a foreigner
Eiko Otake and Patrizia Herminjard, 2023, USA, 4m
World Premiere
Japanese with English subtitles

Once a person is a foreigner, she never ceases to be a foreigner. No place is hers, except her shadow. This film features award-winning, movement-based interdisciplinary artist Eiko Otake, who has been a pivotal figure in site-specific dance for more than five decades.

Dance on Camera Festival 2024
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Join us for a screening and discussion of No Rule is Our Rule, a documentary film about friendship between two fiercely independent, interdisciplinary female dance artists Eiko Otake and Wen Hui. Eiko grew up in postwar Japan and has lived in New York since 1970s. 8 years younger, Beijing based Wen Hui grew up during the Cultural Revolution in China and shows her work internationally. They spent a month together in China in January 2020, when the surge of COVID-19 became first known to the general public. Postponing their physical collaboration, Eiko and Wen Hui continued to converse candidly over Zoom and co-edited the footage they filmed in China. The process has deepened their mutual understanding  of their past works created and presented in different historical and social contexts.  

This event marks Wen Hui's first return to New York since 2018, when she presented her work Red at Asia Society. The 76-minute film screening will be followed by a discussion with the artists themselves. Yiru Chen, who joined Eiko and Wen Hui in editing, will also participate in the conversation, which is moderated by Zhen Zhang, Professor in the Department of Cinema Studies at NYU Tisch and founding Director of the Asian Film and Media Initiative. 

No Rule is Our Rule was recently selected for the Munich New Wave Film Festival and won Best Feature Documentary at the Japan International Film Festival this year. 

Asia Society
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No Rule Is Our Rule is a story of friendship between two independent female artists and their body memories each willingly carry. In January 2020, New York based, interdisciplinary performing artist Eiko Otake arrived in Beijing to visit Wen Hui, a Chinese choreographer and filmmaker. Eight years apart, Eiko grew up in postwar Japan and Wen during the Cultural Revolution. They planned to visit each other for a month to converse and collaborate. The surge of COVID-19 abruptly cut off Eiko's visit and the pandemic has so far made Wen's visit to the USA impossible but not the collaboration. Looking back on the video diaries they shot without a script, Eiko and Wen continued their dialogue on Zoom, sharing past works that form a deeper understanding of their circumstantial differences and characteristic similarities. No Rule Is Our Rule has been selected by Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema, Munich New Wave Film Festival, and WRPN Women's International Film Festival, and the film won Best Feature Documentary at the Japan International Film Festival.

The screening will be followed by a conversation between Eiko Otake and Merián Soto, a Puerto Rican dancer, choreographer, video, and improvisation artist.

The screening is organized by Asian Arts Initiative and co-presented with 2023 Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival (PAAFF) as part of their public programs. 

Asian Arts Initiative
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EIKO OTAKE: I Invited Myself, vol. III is the third iteration of Eiko Otake’s I Invited Myself, an exhibition series that the artist started in 2022. Following the first iteration showcased at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the second iteration at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Asian Arts Initiative and The Fabric Workshop and Museum have partnered to present different versions of EIKO OTAKE: I Invited Myself in Philadelphia. The institutions have worked together and alongside the artist to present specific aspects of Otake’s expansive practice. 

The reception will be held in our gallery from 3–5pm and is open to all. The screening and performance, held in our theater, has limited seating and requires registration. A screening of Slow Turn, co-commissioned by Lower Manhattan Council, NYU Skirball, and Battery Park City in 2021 in commemorating the 20th Anniversary of the September 11 Attacks, will be followed by a live performance by Eiko Otake. Two showings will be presented, one at 3pm and again at 4:30pm. Please select the time you wish to attend through the registration link. 

Asian Arts Initiative
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PASSING BODIES - Choreographing Ecocritical Routes is an ongoing artistic research conversation between Eylül Fidan Akıncı and Tery Žeželj, which culminates in a day-long event at Theater Rotterdam in the frame of the European network ACT: Art, Climate & Transition. 

It aims to connect ecocriticism, choreography, and activist practices of place making and is designed as an exchange of discursive practices. Choreographing Ecocritical Routes centers on the importance of body, mobility, and space for ecocritical activations in the performing arts. This exchange will take choreographer Eiko Otake’s film A Body in Fukushima as its focal point. 

13:00 
Choreo-dramaturging of Anthropocene Lecture 
by Eylül Fidan Akıncı
In conjunction with the screening, Akıncı will give a lecture to contextualize Eiko Otake’s extended performance series as an artistic response in the aftermath of Fukushima disaster. What is the performance artists’ task at the age of Anthropocene? As the public and scholarly conversations tackle the term “Anthropocene” and its propriety to name the geo-ecological epoch we are in, it becomes clear that we need critical and creative tools to retain sight of the planetwide commons of disasters.

14:30 
If trees would cry, we would cry too
Sound walk by Tery Žeželj
As a bridge between the film and the lecture, Žeželj will propose a site-sensitive walking activation to recalibrate the mind and body to perceive things unmourned and unmournable along the path: What is worthy of mourning in our society? How do we collectively deal with ecological grief? How can we mourn other bodies? How can art make mourning visible and shared? Can mourning cultivate a different attitude towards the environment?

15:30 
A Body in Fukushima
Film by Eiko Otake
The film was crafted from tens of tousands of photographs, taken by William Johnston, of Eiko Otake in the surreal, irradiated landscapes of post-nuclear meltdown Fukushima, Japan. Eiko travelled six times to evacuated, desolate Fukushima since the triple disaster—earthquake, tsunami, nuclear meltdown—of 2011. From her second trip forward, she was accompanied by Johnston (also a professor of Japanese history and public health at Wesleyan University) who documented her body in places of nuclear contamination.

Relay lectures - a coproduction between Bunker & Theater Rotterdam - is part of ACT (Art Climate Transition), a European cooperation project on ecology, climate change and social transition. In an era of climate breakdown, mass extinction and growing inequalities, we join our forces in a project on hope: connecting broad perspectives with specific, localised possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we ACT.

Theater Rotterdam
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Eiko’s documentary film A Body in Fukushima will be screened at the 2023 International Uranium Film Festival at Modern Art Museum Cinematheque in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The screening will take place on Sunday, May 28, the last day of the festival, at 4PM.

The festival is dedicated to all films about nuclear power and the risks of radioactivity, from uranium mining to nuclear waste, from atomic bombs to nuclear power plants, from Hiroshima to Fukushima.

International Uranium Film Festival
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8:00pm
No Rule Is Our Rule 没有規則是我們的規則 (Wen Hui & Eiko Otake, 2022, 66 min.)
Q & A with filmmakers moderated by Zhen Zhang and Angela Zito

In this first gathering since the pandemic, we celebrate the two-decade journey of the Reel China Biennial, as well as the indomitable spirit and creative expression of independent filmmakers within and outside China. This milestone edition of Reel China brings back to NYC innovative and bold works by veteran filmmakers in the PRC along with diaspora and emerging Sinophone voices. From a frenetic Beijing on the eve of the Olympics to the searching for lost homes and new visions in internal and external exile, there are narrative and visual surprises. The program of short and long films, fiction and non-fiction in analog and digital formats, bears sharp and delicate witness to the tumultuous changes in China and the world in the 21st century.

Co-organized by

Zhen Zhang, Director of Asian Film Media Initiative, NYU
Angela Zito, Director of the Center for Religion and Media, NYU
Cristina Cajulis, Events Coordinator, Cinema Studies Department, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU

Free and open to the public. RSVP required. NYU ID and Violet Go pass OR proof of vaccination and approved campus access needed for entry. Absolutely no exceptions. RSVPs must be received by Wednesday, October 19, 2022.

Preferred seating on a first come, first served basis. Plan to arrive early.

10th Reel China Biennial at NYU
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A rare screening of works created during the pandemic will be followed by a conversation with the artist.

Presented by the Mills College Dance Department and Mills Performing Arts

Open to the public, with both in-person and via live stream. Registration is required.

In-Person:

$5 to $30 General Admission, Free with valid Mills ID.
Capacity is limited and Proof of Vaccination is required.
Face Coverings are required, at all times, in all venues.
For more info and a list of accepted documents visit: Mills College COVID-19 Response for event guests.

Live Stream: 

Free -or- Pay What You Wish.
Live Stream link will be provided on the day of the event

This rare screening of works created during the pandemic will be followed by a conversation with the artist.Acclaimed performance artist Eiko Otake will present three of her evocative short films at Mills College’s historic Marilyn McArthur Holland Theater in Lisser Hall, on Feb. 18 at 7 pm and followed by a conversation between Otake and artist/scholar Sheldon Smith.

The films to be screened, all created during the pandemic, include A Body in a Cemetery (15 min), an edited recording of her September 2020 performance in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, mourning the dead from the pandemic as well as from past centuries;  and  

Projecting Fukushima in Tokyo (35 min), which captures Eiko performing throughout Tokyo’s streets and underground locations, marking the 10-year anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear meltdown. Eiko will conclude the evening with a report on her new work, Slow Turn, which includes a monologue performed on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks along the Hudson River near where the Twin Towers once stood.  

Otake, who is now in her 70s, has been surprising audiences worldwide since she set out in 2014 to make work on her own. The films she will share at Mills are part of this prodigious collection of intimate, emotionally evocative, and aesthetically arresting works that leave the stage behind, and place her in environments ranging from a train station in Philadelphia to the coastline of Fukushima. A 2022 Mills Performing Artist in Residence, Otake seems more inspired than ever, and has created a not-to-be-missed body of work that wrestles with destruction, mortality, relationship to the land, kinship and history. 

This screening marks Otake’s first public event after turning 70 and the beginning of her next 10-year project: Eiko Invites Herself. 

Kronos Festival will premiere Eiko Otake and David Harrington: A Body in Fukushima. David has been offering Eiko music and sounds for her larger project A Body in Fukushima since 2018 and has commissioned this short piece that presents the core of the work.

Film by Eiko Otake
Music by David Harrington
Photographs by William Johnston
David Harrington filmed and recorded by Emily Quinn in Willits, California

Kronos Festival
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Film premiere: Friday, June 11 at 5pm (ET) via Zoom
The premiere will be followed by a live discussion.

REGISTER HERE (A Zoom link will be sent to registrants approximately 30 minutes prior to the event)

Part of PLATFORM 2021: The Dream of the Audience

Eiko Otake and Joan Jonas present a new short video work created while in-residence at Danspace’s historic venue in St. Mark’s Church.

During her Platform 2021 residency at Danspace Project, movement-based, interdisciplinary artist, Eiko Otake will be working on a new film collaboration with performance and video pioneer, Joan Jonas. In an unprecedented turn, Otake has invited Jonas to be the first artist to ever direct her in a performance, which will be filmed in Danspace’s sanctuary at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery.

In recent years Otake and Jonas have formed a collaborative friendship (discussed in detail in their 2020 Conversation Without Walls). Both artists create work that engages deeply with its site and experiments with viewership; how the work is experienced and how the viewer experiences themselves within it.

After working for more than 40 years as Eiko & Koma, in 2014, Otake began performing her own solo project A Body in Places, through which she has been exploring the relationship of a fragile human body to the myriad intrinsic traits that are contained by a specific place. Platform 2016: A Body in Places was co-curated by Otake, Judy Hussie-Taylor, and Lydia Bell. It illuminated and expanded Otake’s solo project with readings, durational installations, and daily solo performances by Otake in locations all over NYC’s East Village, home to Danspace Project. Jonas premiered her acclaimed immersive performance work, Moving Off the Land at Danspace Project in 2018.

This film premieres June 11, 2021, and will be available for viewing on our Journal from July 1-Aug 31.

Danspace Project
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Special Danspace archival footage will be released on the Online Journal, Issue 12, each Monday of Platform 2021: The Dream of the Audience.

Eiko Otake’s A Body in Places was presented as part of Platform 2016: A Body in Places, curated by Lydia Bell, Judy Hussie-Taylor, and Eiko Otake.

Joan Jonas’ immersive lecture-performance, Moving Off the Land, had its US premiere at Danspace Project in 2018.

Danspace Project
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Raindate: Saturday, May 23, 2021 at 8:30pm

Eiko Otake, Visiting Artist in Residence in Dance, debuts a newly updated, 75 minute rendering of A Body in Fukushima, edited over the course of 2020 during her virtual creative residency at Wesleyan. The film includes hundreds of photographs taken by John E. Andrus Professor of History and Professor of East Asian Studies, Science in Society, and Environmental Studies William Johnston of Eiko in the surreal, irradiated landscapes of post-nuclear meltdown Fukushima, Japan. Marking ten years since the earthquake and tsunami disaster in March 2011, the work traces their five trips to the evacuated, desolate environment, and includes never before seen images captured during their December 2019 visit. This special outdoor screening, the United States premiere of the work, will include a live performance by Eiko with an original score by violinist David Harrington, founder and artistic director of the Kronos Quartet.

Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts
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The Doris Duke Theatre was lost in a fire the morning of November 17, 2020. The fire was contained to the building; no one was injured and no other buildings suffered damage. Jacob's Pillow is at the early stages of planning to rebuild the historic performance space.

Join us in commemorating the Doris Duke Theatre and the artists, audience, and memories that filled the space with joy and art for 30 years. You are invited to hear tributes, join in a collective moment of movement, and witness the first screening of a film by Eiko, Liz Sargent, and Minos Papas captured on the Pillow's site days after the fire.

Jacob’s Pillow
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尾竹永子が語る災害とアート

-東日本大震災からコロナ禍まで-

2020.7.30（木）18:30～20:00（受付18:15～）

会場：主婦会館プラザエフB2 ｸﾗﾙﾃ

参加費:1,000 円（定員50 名 申込先着順

近来　人災でないといえる天災があるだろうか？　福島原発での津波は「想定外」の高さとされ、 Covic-19のパンデミックはコロナという「敵」との「戦争」と詭弁が続く 。 ムーブメント・アーティスト尾竹永子さんは福島で単身のパファーマンスを重ね、その写真と映像を世界各地で展示、また３．１１メモリアルをニューヨークで重ねてきた。今年は中国、ニューヨークでコロナ禍を経験しながら　作品の制作と発表　対話を続ける。その幅広い活動の内容と原点を映像上映とともに語る。

Japan Women’s Network for Disaster Risk Reduction
https://jwndrr.org/