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
Link to Event