In July 2017, I performed my solos at Jacob’s Pillow. Pam Tatge invited both Bill Johnston and Alexis Moh for a collaborators’ dialogue in which the three of us could articulate how a collaboration with a photographer and a videographer can go beyond the originally assigned/assumed roles. I spoke about how I am the kind of performer who needs eyes: eyes of audience and eyes of any kind including photo and video. Making media works with close collaborators is a dialogue, and the material created becomes building blocks for my composition in which my media collaborators can also be further involved.
In August 2017, I was invited to perform in an annual commemoration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at New York’s Buddhist Church. This is the first time I performed and talked extensively about Kyoko Hayashi, my close friend and the atomic bomb survivor, who died in earlier 2017 and whose work I translated and published. In preparation for this event, I practiced the idea of creating duets with dead artists to develop conversation and knowledge.
Throughout the academic year, I was a Think Tank fellow at the College of Environment. During the first few months, I worked to create a 7.5 hour video to project during my Met performances, selecting hundreds of still photos from tens of the thousands Bill Johnston took of me performing in Fukushima and rearranging them; giving different durations, connections, adding texts and sound. I conceived it as a layered duet: my body dances with the contaminated landscape within the projection, I then dance with that projection, and the process of creation and performance was a duet with Johnston. I also rehearsed the work, inviting and showing parts to community members, which allowed me to experiment creating many interactions with each viewer, eye to eye.
David Brick and Iris McCloughan also visited me at Wesleyan and both experimented in creating various duets with me. Sam Miller, who helped me to conceive the project, also visited a few times and spent time in the studio working as a dramaturg.
Chitra Vairavan came to work with me and I developed the concept of “1+1=2, this is a duet, 2-1=1 plus memories, which is also a duet,” meaning that solo performers like me and Chitra can engage in solos which are in fact duets with an invisible partner. She shadowed me in my teachings and other activities so we explored the ways in which two people who have never met can invest in creating knowledge and make distance malleable.
On three Sundays in November 2017, I performed a commissioned work, A Body in Places: Met Edition, for 7.5 hours at each of the three Met buildings: the Cloisters, the Met Breuer, and the Fifth Avenue building. The performance became a duet with a video that I created from hundreds of still photos, without repeating a single image. It was also a duet with the very different architecture of the three Met museums. Iris McCloughan stayed with me during the entire 22.5 hours as a dramaturg, and Bill Johnston also took photos.
I brought DonChristian Jones and Bill Johnston to the Rauschenberg residency from November 20 to December 20. DonChristian and I created about eight video works, and I also realized the impact of bringing in young minority artists into the mix of an older, mostly white group. When Bill came, we experimented with large-size prints of photos at the Met and in Fukushima.
At the end of the residency, I performed with a staff member who had worked with Rauschenberg, and it was a learning experience about how duet-making connects me to other people and knowledge beyond my own planning.
I also worked with Mérian Soto and Jeanine Durning.
In March 2018, I went to Toyama, Japan to see my grandfather and painter Chikuha Otake’s solo exhibition. He died 16 years before I was born. Seeing his large scale works together with his drawings, essays, and poems was a singular experience. The museum allowed me to perform privately with his painting and make a video of the performance. I invited cousins and art historians to this trip so I could learn about my grandfather from different peoples’ perspectives.
I returned to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine to work with my collaborators (Alexis Moh, Margaret Leng Tan, DonChristian Jones, Iris McCloughan) and created and rehearsed the work in the Nave of the Cathedral and in other chambers where visitors happened upon us, observed, and engaged in conversation with the artists. On November 20th, we held the first early-stage public presentation of the Duet Project. In this showing, I brought audience members into different parts of the Cathedral where different duets happened. I also performed with three deceased artists; painter Chikuha Otake, C.D. Wright, and Sam Miller. During the Cathedral residency, Michelle Boule joined me three times in experimenting in duets.
My mother, Yukiko Otake, died, and I deeply realized that a mother and daughter are dancing a duet from the beginning until the end. Beverly McIver visited me in Japan for 10 days in February. She attended my mother’s funeral, which later became the subject of her paintings. We spent time discussing and also exploring the potentials of collaboration. Beverly took photos to help her painting. Beverly recounts that her visit in Japan was life changing.
In March 2019, choreographer Merian Soto invited me for a three-day residency in Temple University in Philadelphia. Alexis, Merian, and I had intensive creative time to further develop duets, and I invited David Brick, another collaborator, as a dramaturg for this occasion. The residency ended with a work-in-progress showing and an intense conversation with audience members. The program included my duet with Merian and Alexis, and I also performed with my video, “a grandfather I never met.” Alexis hones up her insistence in environmental concerns and challenges Merian and me.
On March 29, DonChristian Jones and I performed a movement installation, "bodies," as a free admission event at the public plaza in front of the Columbia University's Lenfest Center for the Arts. Curated by Alessandra Gomez, “Into Darkness: exploring me and finding you” was a part of MODA Curates, an annual opportunity offered by The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery and the MA in Modern and Contemporary Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies Program for curatorial proposals related to students’ theses. This was the first time the Duet Project had a full evening-length performance with one collaborator.
During my second of three UCLA CAPS research residencies in April, Alexis Moh, LA-based cinematographer Marjorie Hunt, and I went on a road trip to visit scenically rich but ecologically sensitive sites, such as Sequoia Tree National Park and Death Valley National Park. Alexis and I also visited Manzanar, a historical internment camp site where Japanese-Americans were interned during World War II. I edited the videos shot during this residency to create Three California Landscapes and Visiting Manzanar. In the Manzanar video, Alexis (a Korean-American) and I (a Japanese immigrant) talk about looking like Japanese-Americans but not being them.
On May 25, Wesleyan University hosted a memorial event for Sam Miller in the CFA Theater. After friends’ and colleagues’ remarks, I was invited to share a work-in-progress of the Duet Project. For this one-hour performance, I worked with Iris McCloughan, DonChristian Jones, David Brick, and Ralph Samuelson - all alumni of Wesleyan University. This represented a unique opportunity for me to bring the Duet Project into a theater space, which I have avoided for my solo performances since 2014. I acknowledge Sam as a life-long dramaturg and supporter who also helped me to conceive the Duet Project.
In June 2019, I spent a two-week-long residency at Alfred University's Institute for Electronic Arts (IEA). I worked on a new series of videos to build an installation work called A Body in Landscape that combined footage filmed by Alexis Moh during our trip to California with a live performance. Embodying the objective of the Duet Project, “maximizing the potentials of selected encounters,” I spent creative time together with printmaker Aodi Liang, master printer and moth specialist Joseph Scheer, and video artist Rebekkah Paloy - all residential staff and artists at IEA. These collaborators and I produced a number of prints on Chinese papers, photos, and a video installation, Night with Moths and Dancing with My Mother.
The Duet Project officially premiered at ADF in July 2019. The collaborators who performed at the site with me were Iris McCloughan, DonChristian Jones, Alexis Moh, and Beverly McIver. Beverly painted seven large-scale paintings, and I used six of these in the performance and as a part of pre-show installation. We also performed a duet with Beverly’s voice recording, recounting her visit to Japan to attend the funeral of my mother.
I was featured as a focus of TBA Festival in September with 5 programs: my solo A Body in Places, a two month exhibition also titled as A Body in Places, which includes 2.5 hour video installation of A Body in Fukushima, the screening of the shorter Fukushima film at the museum, a public conversation, and the performances of the Duet Project. So many audience members who remembered Eiko & Koma’s performance at the first TBA Festival in 2003 came and attended multiple programs. Iris McCloughan and Ishmael Houston-Jones performed duets with me.
I returned to California for another residency period at CAP (Center for the Art of Performance) UCLA from October 17-25, with a public performance on October 24, 2019.
My residency time at CAP UCLA was spent developing and creating a video installation and performance that focuses on my travels throughout California with collaborator Alexis Moh. I also collaborated with choreographer Ann Carlson.
In November, I went to Vermont to work with John Killacky on a video work, Elegies, where we both spoke to our dead mothers. John has been my friend for a long time, and in July 2018, we attended a tree planting ceremony for our mutual friend Sam Miller at Jacob’s Pillow, and I invited John to join my Duet Project.
I planned on being in China until February 3 as a visiting artist supported by the Asian Cultural Council and the Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation But because of the COVID-19 epidemic, I flew directly from Kunming to Osaka on January 26.
While in China, I spent a lot of time with Wen Hui and learned a lot from her. I am grateful that she arranged for me to present video lectures and workshops in Beijing and Nanjing.
From May 3–17, 2021, I collaborated with Merián Soto for a creative residency at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. We danced in studios and on dunes and beaches.
David Harrington of Kronos Quartet provided various music and sounds for my Fukushima project, and during the pandemic, we worked together in New York, and David also worked in California’s Redwoods imagining me in Fukushima.
I premiered a live outdoor performance of A Body with Fukushima, intimately interwoven with David’s video and music, at Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts on May 22. On June 18, Kronos Festival premiered Eiko Otake and David Harrington: A Body in Fukushima.
Joan Jonas and I presented a new media work, With the Earth at My Waistline, commissioned by Danspace Project as part of Platform 2021: The Dream of the Audience. This was the first time that anyone else has directed me. I asked Joan to join me for a two-week residency at St. Mark’s Church Sanctuary to create this piece. In collaborating with Joan, I learned not only about her but also about myself.
The Dance Center at Columbia College Chicago presented The Duet Project: Distance Is Malleable from February 11–12. I was joined by collaborators Ishmael Houston-Jones, DonChristian Jones, and Iris McCloughan. Following the Friday performance, there was a post-performance discussion.
The New York premiere of The Duet Project: Distance Is Malleable was presented at NYU Skirball from April 15–17. I performed duets with my collaborators Ishmael Houston-Jones, DonChristian Jones, Iris McCloughan, and Margaret Leng Tan, with lighting by David Ferri and stage management by Jessica Ho (JHo). The project as a whole, I came to realize, is like making a quilt that sews together our memories and wishes reflecting on yesterday’s, today’s, and tomorrow’s world. The New York performances were a New York Times Critic’s Pick.
Beverly McIver, Ishmael Houston-Jones, and I performed within Beverly’s painting retrospective Full Circle at the Scottsdale Museum of Art on September 1. We moved through the galleries and engaged with the artwork, which included more than 50 paintings from throughout Beverly’s career. Afterwards, we had a conversation about our collaboration moderated by Colleen Jennings-Roggensack.
DonChristian, Iris, Ishmael, and I performed at ASU Gammage, a large landmark theater designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. We filled the stage with a huge video projection of California Landscapes, my collaboration with lex moon.
