Eiko Otake Residency

Invited by the Center for the Arts, Visiting Artist in Residence in Dance Eiko Otake started work on a virtual creative residency in March 2020. Her Virtual Studio is where she posted new creations, dialogues, and reflections. The studio also included her work with collaborators and their voices. In working at her Virtual Studio, Eiko said she was no longer content being just a dancer/choreographer. From the studio, she observed and reached out to the world, the world full of movements--social, political, natural, and emotional.

She also debuted a newly updated, 75 minute rendering of "A Body in Fukushima," edited over the course of 2020. The film included hundreds of photographs taken by John E. Andrus Professor of History and Professor of East Asian Studies, Science in Society, and Environmental Studies William Johnston of Eiko in the surreal, irradiated landscapes of post-nuclear meltdown Fukushima, Japan. Marking ten years since the earthquake and tsunami disaster in March 2011, the work traced their five trips to the evacuated, desolate environment, and included never before seen images captured during their December 2019 visit which revealed the ongoing nature of this nuclear disaster and how Fukushima's landscape had been further altered. A special outdoor screening, the United States premiere of the work, included a live performance by Eiko with an original score by violinist David Harrington, founder and artistic director of the Kronos Quartet.