Solo Project: A Body in Places
A Body in Places is the omnibus title of Eiko Otake’s place- and occasion-specific project that she started in 2014 after working as Eiko & Koma for 41 years. Its scale, contents, and modes of presentation vary radically depending on a community, a hosting institution, a place, each place's constituency, a season, and an occasion. Therefore she arrives at a community, converses with a presenter, observes/selects a site, and creates her score that she rehearses in the site. Central to the project is a drive to explore non-traditional venues and to respond to the innate characteristics of each place and its connection to history and/or the larger world.
Performing as a soloist, Eiko willfully partners with the particularities of places and viewers, daring at times to present herself as a nuisance and or as a foreigner, that she is. Her objective is being radically available to be seen and to be heard as a performer and as an artist by diverse audience members. In order to archive this, she often performs with free admissions in announced public sites where intended and informed audiences mingle with passers-by. In communities she visits, Eiko also often presents other activities and programs in the same community, including photo exhibitions and film screenings of her A Body in Fukushima project, a book club, and conversations. In the past, she performed variations of A Body in Places at universities and town libraries, train stations, cathedrals and churches, an observatory, botanical gardens, city parks, a cafeteria, a farmers market, etc. Eiko was featured in Danspace Project’s PLATFORM 2016: A Body in Places and performed solo every day for a month in many intimate places around the East Village.
Click here to see a full list of places Eiko has performed this project.
