What Is War (2025)

Collaboratively created and performed by Eiko Otake and Wen Hui

Lighting Design: David Ferri
Dramaturg: Iris McCloughan

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

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.