What Is War (2025)

Collaboratively created and performed by Eiko Otake and Wen Hui

Lighting Design: David Ferri
Dramaturg: Iris McCloughan

“What Is War” premiered at Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN on April 11 and 12, 2025 followed by UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA) in Los Angeles, CA on April 17, 2025.

Fall 2025 tour dates and venues will be announced soon, including a New York presentation of What Is War.

View the digital program from Walker Art Center here
View the digital program from CAP UCLA here

Wen Hui (b. 1960) is Chinese and currently working in Europe. She grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution. Eiko Otake (b. 1952) is Japanese and lives in New York. She grew up in post-war Japan. Both are female performers/choreographers and filmmakers.

In January 2020, Eiko visited Wen Hui in China for a month. The pandemic obliged the artists to continue their dialogue at a distance. In the process of co-creating an award-winning feature length documentary film No Rule Is Our Rule, the artists began examining the personal memories they hold in their bodies. That quest led them to work together physically in the U.S. to co-create the new performance work What Is War, commissioned by the Walker Art Center, CAP UCLA, Jacob’s Pillow, and Colorado College’s Dance and Theater Department.

In this project, Wen Hui and Eiko Otake create a complex tapestry of language, movement, and video to share their personal memories related to war. As they move together, their bodies intimately support and absorb each other’s stories, inviting the audience to consider their own relationship to war on both a historic and personal scale.

For inquiries on the project please reach out to Eiko and Allison at info@eikootake.org.

3 minutes 45 seconds

A short video excerpt from a work-in-progress showing at Duke University

Camera by Jingqiu Guan
Edit by Eiko Otake and Wen Hui

Featured Press

Fjord Review: “What Is War” at CAP UCLA
PDF available
by Victoria Looseleaf, April 2025

LA Dance Chronicle: Eiko Otake and Wen Hui’s “What Is War” at CAP UCLA
by Jeff Slayton, April 19, 2025

Writing about our generation: What Is War at MASS MoCA
by John R. Killacky, February 2025

Interviews

Walker Art Center Magazine: Every War Belongs to You: Wen Hui on What Is War
by Rachel Cooper, April 2025

Walker Art Center Magazine: We All Have War in Our Bodies: Eiko Otake on What Is War
by Rachel Cooper, April 2025

Walker Art Center Magazine: Eiko Otake and Wen Hui on What Is War
by Rachel Cooper, April 2025

Photos

From the Artists

NOTE FROM EIKO

The current constitution of Japan was drafted by American civilian officials during the occupation of Japan after World War II. It was adopted on November 3, 1946, and came into effect on May 3, 1947. Not a single word has been changed since.

Article 9 states: Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

Everyone who taught me about World War II is now dead, but I remember their voices. Article 9 is in my body.

A LETTER FROM WEN HUI

Dear Eriko Ikeda,

My name is Wen Hui, a dance choreographer and documentary creator from China. I have been a friend of Eiko for thirty years. I heard you have been her friend since high school and she told you about me and our collaboration on What Is War.

In 2020, Eiko visited me in Beijing. She said she wanted to go to the Nanjing Massacre Museum. This surprised me because, though I had never been there, I imagined the site would be an uncomfortable place for a Japanese person. Her desire moved me, and we went there together. That was quite an experience!

At the site of Lijixiang “Comfort Station,” a division of the Nanjing Massacre Museum,but in a different location and much quieter place. There, Eiko told me that you were the founder of Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace in Tokyo, which exhibits accounts of “Comfort Women” from different countries, and that you have for decades supported and fought for these victims and their family members. I heard that you organized “the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery.” Eiko also showedme many DVDs you produced, directed, filmed, and edited. Eiko and I watched the videos together as she translated the Japanese subtitles for me. Many people talk about war, but few people talk about the harm done to women in war. My past works have focused on women’s body memory. Hearing their voices and seeing their faces were deeply affecting to me. As a Chinese woman, I understand how courageous these Asian women from many countries are/were in their old age in sharing their stories and seeking justice. I deeply respect them and your work. I look forward to meeting you and your colleagues.

Sincerely,
Wen Hui

To learn more information on “Comfort House” and “Comfort Women” please refer to Lijixiang “Comfort Station” in Nanjing and Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace.

ABOUT THE COLLABORATION

Eiko has lived in New York and worked in America since 1976. Wen Hui, a Chinese citizen, currently lives in Frankfurt. We met in 1995 when we both were invited to perform at the Guandong International Theater Festival. We got to know each other better during Wen Hui’s year-long fellowship in 1997-1998 in the U.S. In 2020, Eiko had a month-long fellowship in China during which we spent every day together. Eiko was deeply moved by Wen Hui’s friends and family who opened their hearts because Eiko was Wen Hui’s friend. When Wen Hui’s subsequent visit to New York had to be canceled due to the pandemic, we decided to look back at the footage we made in China and co-edit a film with Yiru Chen. The process of making the film, No Rule Is Our Rule, required frequent communication, which also built the foundation for What Is War.

While working on this project, we learned many things from each other, our families, and friends. We also remembered things we had forgotten. We are grateful to Wen Hui’s mother, Lao Xiujuan, for revealing her childhood experiences with war.

— Wen Hui and Eiko Otake

What Is War was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and the Mellon Foundation.