20
Jun/15

EIKO: A BODY IN A STATION

20
Jun/15

RIVER TO RIVER FESTIVAL
Fulton Center
Fulton St. & Broadway
Monday, June 22, 7:00; Tuesday, June 23, 4:00, Wednesday, June 24, 7:00
Festival continues through June 28
lmcc.net
www.eikoandkoma.org
a body in a station slideshow

In our 2011 interview with Eiko Otake about Naked, her dance installation with her husband, Takashi Koma Otake, at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, she described the dynamic of having the audience coming and going as they please. “We were very close to people, which created the sense of intimacy. There was no beginning or end but purely entries and exits of people, which the audience decided themselves. So there was more of an individual act of seeing and feeling on their own accord.” Eiko and Koma followed up Naked with Water/Residue, which took place in the Paul Milstein Pool at Lincoln Center, and The Caravan Project in MoMA’s lobby. All three performances involved agonizingly slow movement that evoked life and death, merging humanity with the natural environment. Eiko, who performed the site-specific Two Women with Tomoe Aihara on Governors Island at last year’s River to River Festival, is now bringing her first solo project, A Body in Places, to the brand-new Fulton Center in Lower Manhattan, where she will be surrounded by thousands of commuters on their way somewhere else as she interacts with the large screens, the unique architecture, and the multitude of passersby. Previously staged in Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station and the Olin Library lobby at Wesleyan, the durational piece will be presented June 22 and 24 at 7:00 and June 23 at 4:00; in the meantime, don’t be surprised if you suddenly see Eiko crawling, grasping, and reaching on the street, as she has been interacting with the city in pop-up pieces in advance of the central performances.