Eiko & Koma

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Eiko Otake and Koma Otake, generally known as Eiko & Koma, are a Japanese husband and wife dance team. They have been living and working in the United States since 1976. They were 1996 recipients of a MacArthur Fellows Program "genius grant".

1 Biography
2 Work
3 Repertory
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Biography

Eiko and Koma met while studying political science and law at Waseda University in the late 1960s. They joined the company of Butoh pioneer Tatsumi Hijikata in 1971, studied under Kazuo Ohno, and started choreographing their own dances. They lived for five years in Germany and the Netherlands, where they became acquainted with European contemporary dance (the so-called "Neue Tanz", or "New Dance"), and moved to New York in 1976.

[edit] Work

Although heavily inspired by Butoh, Eiko & Koma rarely refer to it explicitly, and prefer to cite the "Japanese avant-garde" as their inspiration. Their works are generally done outside of traditional theaters, in natural surroundings ("site-adaptable outdoor performance installations"), often using natural elements such as branches, leaves and dirt. The performances are often free to the public.

Their 2002 work, Offering, "a ritual of regeneration after loss", was performed in parks, plazas and gardens throughout Manhattan and toured across New England, the U.S. West Coast, Canada, Poland, Estonia and Lithuania.

Currently, Eiko is an artist in residence at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. She is teaching classes in both the dance and east asian studies departments in addition to intermittently organizing delicious movement workshops. They love to dance!