Excerpts of chapter 4 are reprinted with permission from “Bodies, Camera, Screen: Eiko & Koma’s Immersive Media Dances,” International Journal of Screendance 4 (2014): 80–92.
I continue to be indebted to my UCLA dissertation committee, whose guidance during graduate school provided me with a firm foundation from which to write this book. Susan Leigh Foster remains a generous mentor. Her influence, along with that of Lucy Mae San Pablo Burns, Janet O’Shea, and Carol Sorgenfrei, suffuses this book.
Texas Woman’s University supported this book with a Small Grant, multiple School of the Arts Faculty Scholarship Enhancement Grants, and course releases. Parts of chapters 4 and 6 were presented as part of the Faculty Spotlight Series and as a research briefing for the Department of Women’s Studies. In addition, I thank Mary Williford-Shade for being the most understanding chair an assistant professor could ask for.
Ever since I took my first dance class at age four, I wanted to be a dancer. And ever since my father first showed me his bound dissertation when I was eight years old, I knew that I wanted my own name to appear on the spine of a book. What a delight it is to have those two childhood dreams come together in this book. Much of the credit goes to my mother, who drove me to all those dance classes, prioritized my education, and trusted me to make good decisions. Finally, the biggest thanks go to Karl Gossot, whose quiet support has sustained me through this book and so much more.
A NOTE ABOUT JAPANESE NAMES AND WORDS
I follow the Monumenta Nipponica stylesheet with the following exceptions. I have chosen to list all Japanese names given name first, family name second. Even in Japan, where the standard is family name first, individuals with established careers outside of Japan are commonly referred to with the given name first, for example, Kazuo Ohno. Since this book primarily engages with Japanese artists through the frame of American concert dance, I employ this convention across the board to avoid confusion, unless a name appears in a direct quote, in which case I reproduce the original order. This name order is also consistent with English-language reviews, program notes, and publications. In terms of spelling, I generally eschew macrons in the case of well-established transliterations (e.g., butoh instead of butō, noh instead of nō, Ohno instead of Ōno), but keep them for less common names and words.
Furthermore, I follow Eiko & Koma’s practice of writing their names with an ampersand when referring to their professional work; when I refer to them as individuals, I use Eiko and Koma.
FLOWERS CRACKING CONCRETE
INTRODUCTION
Walking into Wesleyan University’s Zilkha Gallery for the launch of Eiko & Koma’s Retrospective Project, I almost feel as if I am backstage at a theater rather than at the opening of an exhibition. A massive, sand-colored canvas hanging from the ceiling reinforces my perception of being behind the scenes. Upon closer inspection, the burnt surface offers me small windows through which I may catch glimpses of the gallery beyond. Students, many of them from Eiko’s Delicious Movement for Forgetting, Remembering, and Uncovering class, busily rush past me, taking care of last-minute tasks. Small attentive groups, including then American Dance Festival director Charles Reinhart, Retrospective Project producer Sam Miller, and former Japan Foundation director of performing arts Paula Lawrence, gather in front of video screens behind me displaying the video compilation, 38 Works by Eiko & Koma, which cycles through documentation of the duo’s dances since they came to the United States from Japan in 1976. The energy of the crowd pulls me further down the hallway, past a table set up with a computer displaying Eiko & Koma’s new Web site, and toward backdrops from Cambodian Stories (2006) that grace the walls. Just as the paintings by students at Reyum School of Art in Phnom Penh begin to tower over me, I notice my feet are crunching dry leaves; am I supposed to be walking here? Instead of ending at a wall, this hallway has led me into the leafy, dimly lit cave that is the set of Breath, Eiko & Koma’s 1998 live installation at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Although I feel I could stay in this environment for hours, sounds from the main gallery draw me back toward the scorched and scarred canvas. Stepping around it, I find myself literally onstage, facing rows of empty chairs, soon to be filled by the more than one hundred attendees. I am standing on the black-feather-and straw-strewn set for Raven (2010), which will have a preview performance in just a few moments. Gazing around the high-ceilinged, long room, I am first struck by the media dances filling the near wall. In one, Eiko & Koma’s naked bodies seem to float midair, sorrow dripping from their bodies, in Lament (1985), while on a nearby cracked and peeling screen, Eiko & Koma raise a white flag of surrender in documentation of Event Fission (1980). Opposite, the wall is all glass, providing a view of the trailer from Eiko & Koma’s Caravan Project (1999); standing open as it did during site-specific performances all over the United States, its fiery interior is mirrored by a blanket of crimson leaves on the ground and the sun setting through bare trees. Beyond the chairs at the far end of the gallery hangs a mysterious, speckled black canvas, in front of which Eiko & Koma will end the evening with a revival of their first piece of set choreography, White Dance (1976). Wending its way around the perimeter of the gallery is a thread of snapshots at eye level. This literal time line is paradoxically not linear; when I reach the end, I have somehow returned to the beginning. In addition to images of well- and lesser-known works by Eiko & Koma, I spot photos of the dancers with Kazuo Ohno, Manja Chmiel, and Anna Halprin. One photo from the time line also circulates around the gallery on homemade T-shirts worn by Irene and Paul Oppenheim, the producers of Eiko & Koma’s very first performance in the United States in 1976.
Time Is Not Even, Space Is Not Empty opened on November 19, 2009, and launched the three-year Retrospective Project through which Eiko & Koma aimed to examine their body of work for its continued or shifting resonances for contemporary audiences. The Retrospective gave Eiko & Koma the opportunity to rigorously examine their own practice through the collection (and sometimes production) of archival materials and the creation of new works from earlier dances. Aspects of the Retrospective included museum exhibitions of photographs, sets, and screen dances; a new living installation, Naked (2010); the reworking of older pieces into new dances, for example Raven from Land (1991); the revival of older works; the publication of a retrospective catalog by the Walker Art Center; and a new collaboration with Kronos Quartet, Fragile (2012).
For audience members, the Retrospective showcased the remarkable scope of Eiko & Koma’s body of work. Since meeting at Tatsumi Hijikata’s Asbestos Hall in Tokyo in 1971, Eiko & Koma have choreographed dances that for all their simplicity grapple with monumental matters: destruction and regeneration, relationships among humans and between humans and nature, and the stakes of being an artist in challenging political times. Their work is deeply informed by their participation in the 1960s Tokyo student movement; formative encounters with Hijikata and Ohno, key figures of the avant-garde postwar dance form butoh in Japan; relationships with Mary Wigman assistant Manja Chmiel, Jose Limón dancer Lucas Hoving, and San Francisco iconoclast Anna Halprin; and participation in the New York City arts community. These touchstones—radical politics in postwar Japan, butoh, “Neue