Eiko Otake (b. 1952) eyes closed (2022) Born and raised in Japan and a resident of New York since 1976, Eiko Otake is a movement-based, interdisciplinary artist. For more than 40 years she worked with her partner as Eiko & Koma. Since 2014, she has been performing her own solo project, A Body in Places. In 2017, she launched a multi-year Duet Project, an open-ended series of cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural, and cross-generational experiments with a diverse range of artists both living and dead. Eiko & Koma created their own choreography and presented their works worldwide, including many appearances at the American Dance Festival and BAM’s Next Wave Festival. Durational performance works were commissioned and presented by the Whitney Museum, the Walker Art Center, and MoMA. Eiko & Koma are the first collaborative pair to share a MacArthur Fellowship (1996) and the first Asian choreographers to receive the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award (2004) and the Dance Magazine Award (2006). They were individually honored by the Guggenheim Fellowship (1984) and the first Doris Duke Artist Awards (2012). Otake’s solo activity brought her an Art Matters grant (2015), a special Bessie citation (2016), the Anonymous Was a Woman Award (2016), and the Sam Miller Award for Performing Arts (2020). Otake teaches courses in colleges, and uses movement as means of inquiry to further understanding of mass violence, nuclear disasters, and other environmental matters. Otake was a think tank fellow in The College of the Environment in 2017–2018, and an artist-in residence at Wesleyan’s Cewnter for the Arts in 2020–2021. Her virtual studio (https://www.eikootake.org/virtual-studio) presents her creative works and public discourses created during the COVID-19 pandemic. About eyes closed, Eiko Otake writes: “David Harrington invited me to join Kronos at Zankel Hall as a dancer in an evening of music by women. In turn, I’ve invited David, John, Hank, and Sunny to join my paper dance. Friends make exceptions to each other. That is comforting for our agitated minds.”
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