In memoriam: The tragedy of Fukushima

Eiko Otake introduces her commemorative program,
Remembering Fukushima: Art and Conversations in the Cathedral,
at New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine
all photos ©2017, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

During yesterday's anniversary remembrance of Japan's 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster--a deeply moving event organized at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine by artist-in-residence Eiko Otake--Katja Kolcio, choreographer and Wesleyan professor, spoke of the political upheaval wrought in the wake of Ukraine's 1986 crisis at Chernobyl. Photographer William Johnston, Otake's longtime collaborator, noted the growing environmental activism in Japan following the Fukushima crisis. And we were frequently reminded that, just about fifty miles north of here, in Buchanan, New York, the Indian Point nuclear power plant poses a similar threat. A few months ago, state officials announced an agreement that, by 2021, would lead to the complete shutdown of Indian Point--long touted as "Safe. Secure. Vital." and "Right For New York" by its operating Entergy Corporation.

Massive visual documentation, provided by Johnson and others, alerts the world to the devastating, enduring consequences of nuclear accidents--whole towns emptied of people, toxic and uninhabitable except by irradiated animals and plant life. Otake's program drew together numerous educators, activists and visual, literary, music and movement artists to illustrate how creative communication can help us begin the process of grasping the massive scale of the tragedy and the details of lives destroyed or upended.

And Otake, the inimitable, danced her latest iteration of A Body in a Cathedral, cloaked this time in black, thrusting through holy space like a crow in flight, in alarm, disorientation, displacement, grief...and warning.

"This is what I do as an artist," said Otake.
"I hang around. Thanks to the Cathedral for allowing me to hang around."

Remembering Fukushima: Art and Conversations in the Cathedral was presented in partnership with Asia Society and Danspace Project.

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Update on Eiko Otake at Cathedral of St. John the Divine

Eiko Otake at New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine
November 2016
(photos: William Johnston)

Ask master dancer Eiko Otake about her experience of being an artist-in-residence for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine's Dignity Initiative and, among other things, she will speak of keen feelings of outsider identity. Not US born, not white, not Christian. And yet this grand, historic institution on New York's Upper West Side--with its well-known commitment to the arts, the environment and social justice--has become a space for her to connect with people from all over the world and all walks of life, most by happenstance.

Eiko's residency at the Cathedral from Eiko and Koma on Vimeo.

Last November, I wrote of Otake's engagement there in The Christa Project, a visual arts exhibition centered on images of female divinity (see post). Her unique residency continues through early March when she will join with anthropologist Marilyn Ivy (Columbia University), photographer-historian William Johnston, videographer Alexis Moh, performance artist John Kelly and other speakers and participants to commemorate the six-year anniversary of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, the most severe nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

Remembering Fukushima: Art and Conversations, presented in partnership with Asia Society and Danspace Project, will explore the relationship of body, place and history. Participating artists and speakers include:

Eiko Otake

William Johnston

Marilyn Ivy

Thomas Looser

Mark McCloughan

Alexis Moh

Nora Thompson

Megu Tagami

John Kelly

Carol Lipnik

DonChristian Jones

Geo Wyeth

Ronald Ebrecht

Ralph Samuelson

Elizabeth Brown

Jake Price

Nona Faustine Simmons

NYC iSCHOOL

Remembering Fukushima: Art and Conversations

Saturday, March 11, 1pm-5pm

The Cathedral of St. John the Divine

1047 Amsterdam Avenue (at 112th Street), Manhattan

(directions)

All are welcome. A donation of $10 is suggested but not required.

For information and updates, click here.

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Process and Performance: a talk with dance artist Eiko Otake

Site dance artist Eiko Otake
Above: Kifune Shrine, 4 August 2016
Below: Yaburemachi 5 August 2016
(photos: William Johnston)

Lauren Grant
(photo: Amber Star Merkens)

For my Montclair State University course, Performance Perspectives, Dance MFA student Lauren Grant spoke with Eiko Otake about her site-specific residency at New York's Cathedral of Saint John the Divine.

Process and Performance:

A talk with dance artist
Eiko Otake

by guest contributor
Lauren Grant

Contemporary artist and choreographer Eiko Otake is in residence at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in Manhattan from October 2016-March 2017. Her collaborative work with historian-photographer William Johnston, A Body in Fukushima, is on display as part of the cathedral’s art exhibition, The Christa Project. During her residency, she will explore movement and space, welcome discussions with visitors, design a new video installation, expand her photo exhibit within the cathedral, offer solo performances and curate a culminating event on March 4 and 11, commemorating the sixth anniversary of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan.

I spoke with Ms. Otake about her residency at the cathedral, as well as her process and experiences as a site choreographer.


Lauren Grant: Although your research of movement and space at the cathedral is currently exploratory, it is conducted in front of others. So, in a sense, you are performing. When does the workshop phase become the performance?

Eiko Otake: Yesterday, I was workshopping, but at the same time I was also performing because I was aware there were people already starting to look. I was the same performer that I always am, but I did not know exactly what I was doing; I was more in the process. Although I am in professional performance mode, there is no ticketed audience, nor do I have material with a beginning, middle and end. If I look performative, the people who are watching are kind of happy, but there’s no more story than that; no big crescendo. I am merging process and product.

LG: Do you improvise in performance?

EO: Yes, but in a different way than how dancers go in the studio and improvise. My improvisatory research period gives me the material for a score I will use in the performance. Choreography in a space like this is very contextualized; I may crawl in the center of the cathedral, or become one of its gargoyles. These will be my prompts, and what I do between these prompts may be more improvised. I rehearse the prompts so as I improvise in performance I won’t have to question, “Where is my foot? Where am I standing? Is it dangerous?” I will have already explored that place. It allows me to be more improvisatory in performance because I don’t always have to figure out what’s going on. If I don’t know where I am going, I don’t know what I am doing. If I know I am going to a specific spot, I can decide in the moment how it is I will get there. Once I start going there, I may pretend I’m not, because if I’m too clear, there’s no sense of conflict. The score tells me where to start, maybe where to end, and three or four other things to do; but within those markers, I can do anything. I will never decide how many steps I take to go to a certain place. But I know I will go to that place. I will, however, also reserve the right not to go. My intention will be to go, but if there is something more interesting happening elsewhere, I may skip that part of the score. I own the score, but I am not a servant to it.

LG: What else is involved in this development stage of your residency in the cathedral?

EO: I have this empty space (which is not empty—it’s a very historical, amazing place) and I’m wondering, “What do I do? What do I want from here?” The residency gives me resources. Last week, a videographer or photographer was always with me as we tried to get five or six amazing pictures. My exploration in the space serves to get to those moments. Once I have that raw footage, I can then edit it, which is not too different from choreographing. I’m interested in learning how I can make more of the installation. I’m creating a media work. Perhaps the footage I shoot can end up somewhere on a monitor so people can see another part of me and the church as they move through the cathedral, recognizing that the woman they are seeing here is the woman they saw over there and that this is the front of a church, but they are now inside it. These additions will add layers to my installation.

Filming and photographing my explorations in the space also serve as tools to help me in my creative process. Alexis Moh, my videographer, helps capture what it is I’ve done here because, after a day of workshopping material, I forget what happened. Filmic ways also help me make sense of what I am doing. I find it quite strange that, as an immigrant, and a non-Christian, I have been given a chance to be an artist in residency at this cathedral. Watching the footage helps me materialize what all this means and also serves to point out when my explorations are just me fooling around. Since I am my own director, I need a tool to help me look and think. I don’t believe that video can accurately show me what I do, but it is a helpful little tool.

LG: Do you prefer working in a site versus a theater?

EO: I give up control when I perform in a space other than a theater—I can’t design the light and sound. But I’ve successfully done that kind of theater work for 40 years and am not interested in that anymore. I’m interested in conflict now; a kind of weirdness where people ask, “What is she doing here? Why?” and I don’t have an answer for them.

LG: What is the difference in how you connect with the audience in a site versus a theater?

EO: In a site performance I can see the audience. That’s a huge difference. And they can move around. In a theater they cannot move; they’re usually stuck. And I can’t see them.

LG: How do the different responses from people as they watch (or ignore) you affect you as a performer?

EO: It affects me if they watch; it doesn’t affect me so much if they don’t watch. They ignore me and I ignore them, it’s not really a big deal. I have other things to think about, like “How much did I move forward? Is this video working? Am I going in the right direction?”

LG: In your exploration, I saw a very interesting interaction at the doorway. You caught someone off guard. A woman held the door open for you (for a very long time). I don’t think she knew you were performing.

EO: She said, “Are you ok?” because I looked pretty broken. And I whispered, “Yes, thank you.”

LG: It was beautiful—a human-to-human connection. When you perform, do you seek out moments or opportunities like that with the audience?

EO: When it happens, I recognize it. I don’t seek it out. But when an opportunity arises, I acknowledge it, and may even linger on it. I like lingering on those moments.

LG: How would you feel if somebody was drawn to physically interact with you?

EO: It’s happened a few times. People have called an ambulance or have tried to help me. In a performance in Hong Kong, I started very far from the audience who were watching me from up high. I was eventually to go to them, but I began by lying by the highway. One man stopped and said, “Are you ok?” Since I was in the middle of a performance I only whispered, “I am ok,” but he couldn’t really hear me because I didn’t shout. So he started to call “Help!” That’s when the organizer ran in and told him, “she’s actually performing,” and he was like, “What? But there’s nobody around.” He looked up and saw tons of people watching and he was like, “sorry, sorry!” This is what happens. I kind of enjoyed it. I like that place where I’m really feeble as a performer.

Beauty is contextualized with something hurt. Real beauty is kind of dull because it doesn’t have a pain. I think we find it beautiful, even without that knowledge, but with that knowledge, we find it even more beautiful. If a little Buddha statue has some broken parts, you actually feel more empathic towards it. A little wound makes us feel more deeply.


Eiko at the Cathedral for video installation from Eiko and Koma on Vimeo.


EIKO OTAKE

Born and raised in Japan, and based in New York since 1976, Eiko Otake is a movement based multidisciplinary performing artist. After working as Eiko & Koma for over forty years, Eiko began her solo project, A Body in Places, with A Body in a Station, a twelve-hour performance at Philadelphia’s Amtrak station in October 2014. In the spring of 2016, Eiko was the subject of Danspace Project’s Platform, a month-long curated program of daily solos, installations, workshops and exhibitions. In the fall of 2016, the Bessie Committee awarded a special citation to Eiko for her Platform for “making herself ‘radically available’ in public and private spaces.” Eiko is currently an artist in residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where her photo exhibition in collaboration with William Johnston is on view, and Eiko shares her dance practice with visitors. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award, the Dance Magazine Award, and an inaugural USA Fellowship, the Duke Performing Artist Award, and “Anonymous Was a Woman Award,” Eiko regularly teaches at Wesleyan University, NYU and Colorado College.

LAUREN GRANT

Lauren Grant has danced with the Mark Morris Dance Group since 1996, appearing in 60 of Morris’ works. She teaches technique around the globe, including classes for the company and The School at The Mark Morris Dance Center, sets Morris’ work at universities, and is currently Morris’ rehearsal assistant on his newest creation. Grant received a 2015 New York Dance and Performance Award ("Bessie") for her sustained achievement in performance with Mark Morris and in recognition of her "invigorating spontaneity, expansive phrasing, and robust musicality.” Grant has been featured in Time Out New York, Dance Magazine, the book Meet the Dancers, appeared in PBS's Great Performances, Live From Lincoln Center, and ITV's The South Bank Show, and was a subject for the photographer Annie Leibovitz. Before joining MMDG, Grant moved to New York City from her hometown of Highland Park, Illinois, and earned a B.F.A. from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She is currently pursuing her M.F.A. at Montclair State University where she is also an adjunct professor.

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Eiko Otake at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine

Eiko Otake begins her dance in the Choir
at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine
(all photos ©2016, Eva Yaa Asantewaa)

In the fall of 2016 and winter of 2017, Eiko is an artist in residence at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in Upper Manhattan. She is offering solo performances within the Cathedral, designing a video installation, hosting public conversations, and A Body in Fukushima, a mutable exhibition of dance photographs created in collaboration with historian-photographer William Johnston, is also a part of the larger art exhibition, The Christa Project. Throughout the residency, Eiko will explore the dignity and transcendence inherent in the ordinary and the disregarded.

 --from Eiko & Koma website

Black Friday. I have not spent a penny in stores. Just carfare to travel uptown to watch Eiko Otake at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine where the Japan-born master dancer is in residence through March 11 of next year.

So, how do you find Eiko in that massive space?

Please. Just walk around a few minutes, maybe have a look at William Johnston's portraits of her, and soon, as if from out of nowhere, she will spy you, swoop down and claim you.

When Eiko talks directly to you, she gets right up in your space. You have no time to work out how that happened. You're just swept up in her energy. There's always something somewhere else that she wants to show you, and when she moves off to do so, she's raptor-swift. You just hustle along at her single gesture of command.

She also loves to gather all of her people--friends, students, tourists from Greece and Korea who just happened by--and make a party of strangers. Everyone must first meet everyone else. In this way, Eiko makes the grandeur of the cathedral a little less daunting. She gives permission to everyone to tag along as she drifts here and there--from choir to crossing to congregation seats to art displays to imposing bronze doors--and you get the feeling she might secretly own the joint.

Photos ©2016, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Not quite, though. Not yet. The handsome cathedral provides a dramatic visual backdrop for this dancer. But I sense these two acclaimed works of art are still getting to know one another.

I have most recently seen Eiko's A Body in Places all over my place--the East Village--in her mesmerizing Spring 2016 platform for Danspace Project. I get and am deeply shaken by what she has done in Fukushima. But I am now trying to get a read on what Eiko's body means in the context of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. So far, I can only make connections between her woman's body and the body of The Christa Project art works displayed throughout this sacred space.

Eiko returns to the cathedral in late January and will continue work through early March, culminating in performances to commemorate the sixth anniversary of Japan's devastating earthquake and tsunami.

Check back here as I have been invited to visit again next year and document what I'm seeing. In the meantime, please enjoy a few more photos from yesterday afternoon.

All photos ©2016, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

About The Christa Project: Manifesting Divine Bodies

During Holy Week of 1984, Edwina Sandys’ Christa was displayed in the Cathedral as part of a small exhibition on the feminine divine. The general reception was positive, but a particularly vocal minority condemned the piece and its placement in a house of worship through ecclesiastical denunciations and a plethora of hate mail that attacked the “blasphemy” of changing the symbol of Christ. These dissenters highlighted how the sculpture’s allegedly sexualized (i.e. female) figure brought attention to Christ’s human body, which was “blasphemous, shocking, and inappropriate.”

Conversations about the politics of identity have changed tremendously since the 1980s. Christa’s essential statement, however, remains vital to our world today: people are hungry to see themselves and each other fully represented in society, especially in its most powerful and iconic institutions. In turn, the Cathedral is thrilled to display Christa once again, alongside works by 21 other contemporary artists, all exploring the language, symbolism, art, and ritual associated with the historic concept of the Christ image and the divine as manifested in every person—across all genders, races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and abilities.

--from Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine website 

The Christa Project: Manifesting Divine Bodies will be on view at the cathedral through March 12, 2017. For information, click here.

The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine
1047 Amsterdam Avenue, at 112th Street (Manhattan)
(directions)

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Zuštiak's "Strange Cargo"

Sitting in the darkened, looming Synod House--a side building of the world's largest cathedral, St. John the Divine, rarely opened to the public--you're left with the bluish glow from narrow, distant stained-glass windows. The blue emits a vague comfort, but the lead strips crossing, connecting, restraining the blue snatches that meager comfort away. You shrink back, feeling small, a bit threatened. A man creeps across the floor on his knees, passes a table, pivots, hesitates, gingerly touches the heel of one hand to the floor before skittering around. Other people creep in, one by one, building into a quintet of loners who make actions and sounds of motorized, robotic toys or figures from violent video games. Don't look for the remote control; there is none--and no controller--in sight. There is no God. Only the body and the impossibility of two or more bodies occupying the same space at the same time. And, as we will see, the inevitability of trouble.

Pavel Zuštiak/Palissimo concludes Zuštiak's Painted Bird Trilogy with Strange Cargo--a interdisciplinary production presented by the currently, and interestingly, nomadic Performance Space 122. (The entire trilogy will play out, in September, at Ohio's Wexner Center for the Arts.) Those who have followed this journey, from La MaMa (Bastard, 2010) to Baryshnikov Arts Center (Amidst, 2011) to this ecclesiastical assembly hall, might agree with me that what unfolds here now bumps the dark intensity up several notches and calls up the most grueling and risk-taking performances from its extraordinary crew. At one point, sweat pours down dancer Jeremy Xido's face, but Zuštiak sweats not only body but mind and soul, too.

Aside from Xido and his quietly-menaced prey Luke Murphy, Strange Cargo boasts astonishing work from Lindsey Dietz-Marchant (the most memorable presence in Amidst), Giulia Carotenuto and Denisa Musilova. The rest of Zuštiak's team of collaborators are also tight, and they once again include Joe Levasseur (innovative lighting techniques) and Christian Frederickson and Ryan Rumery (superb original music, performed live). You must see this one.

Strange Cargo continues at Synod House through May 13: Thursday and Sunday at 8pm, Friday and Saturday at 8pm and 9:30pm. Space is limited, and there will be no late seating. For program and ticket information, click here.

Synod House
Cathedral of St. John the Divine
1047 Amsterdam Avenue at West 110th Street, Manhattan
(map and directions)

Tales of Japan's indigenous Ainu

Ralph Lee 

presents

THE OLD BOAT GODDESS - SONGS OF THE AINU

 

Friday-Sunday, September 16, 17, 18 at 7:30pm

Free

Outdoor Garden 
Cathedral of St. John the Divine

111th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, Manhattan

for weather reports: 212-929-4777

                        "In the outdoor garden of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine,

                          Mettawee River Theatre Company employs Ralph Lee's

                          gorgeous puppets to tell traditional stories about the

                          indigenous Ainu people of Japan."

                                                                 The New Yorker, September 19, 2011

                        "The puppeteer Ralph Lee delves into strange worlds, both

                          physical and metaphysical, in his inspired productions."

                                                          The New York Times, September 9, 2011

Renowned puppet and mask maker Ralph Lee presents his Mettawee River Theatre Company in the New York premiere of  The Old Boat Goddess - Songs of the Ainu, three entertaining traditional tales from the Ainu, the indigenous people of northern Japan.  A company of actor/singers handle the superb giant figures, puppets and masks to tell these adventurous tales of interactions between humans, gods and the natural world.

More information