Part-time Faculty
eikootake@gmail.com
1 Wash Pl, Room 716
Office Hours
Tuesday 4-6
Thursday 4-6
B.A., Literature, SUNY Empire State College, 2001
M.A., Individualized Study, New York University, 2007
Born and raised in Japan, Eiko Otake is a New York-based, movement-based interdisciplinary artist and performer who, from 1972 until 2014, worked with Takashi Koma Otake in the performance duo Eiko & Koma. They performed in theaters, museums, and outdoor sites worldwide, including American Dance Festival, BAM’s Next Wave Festival, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Kennedy Center, the Walker Art Center, and the MoMA. Eiko & Koma were honored with two New York Dance and Performance Awards (“Bessie” Awards), two Guggenheim fellowships (1984), a MacArthur Fellowship (1996), the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award (2004), the first United States Artists Fellowship (2006), the Dance Magazine Award (2006), and inaugural Doris Duke Artist Award fellowships (2012). Walker Art Center published a comprehensive monograph of their works, Eiko & Koma: Time is Not Even, Space is Not Empty (Walker Art Center, 2011). Using movement study as a means of inquiry along with readings and media studies, Otake has taught interdisciplinary college courses about the atomic bombings and other environmental issues at Wesleyan University, Colorado College, and UCLA. Otake’s solo project will be the subject of the 10th annual Platform titled A Body in Places, a month-long curated program of Danspace Project in New York City to be held February 20-March 20, 2016.
2022
MA Alumna and Gallatin faculty member Eiko Otake (MA ’07) was featured in the New York Times article, “Bill T. Jones and Eiko Otake: Opposites Guided by ‘Too-Much-Ness’.” New York Magazine called Otake’s performance series at NYU Skirball, The Duet Project: Distance is Malleable, “visionary” and included it in the “highbrow, brilliant” quadrant of their Approval Matrix.
2021
In honor of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, Eiko Otake (MA ’07) performed “Slow Turn” in Battery Park City, a new piece that centers on Otake’s memories of that day and its aftermath.
movement installation; contemporary performance; dance for camera; public art; dance archive; atomic bomb massive violence and atomic bomb literature; nuclear plants Fukushima meltdowns and environmental disasters; post war Japanese film and literature
Eiko Otake (MA '07) was awarded a 2016 Special Citation from the Bessie Awards for her A Body in Places platform, for "making herself 'radically available' in public and private spaces over several weeks, actively engaging with pressing political and environmental issues of our time."
2023 Fall
Delicious Movement: Time Is Not Even, Space Is Not Empty
2022 Fall
Delicious Movement: Time Is Not Even, Space Is Not Empty
2021 Fall
Delicious Movement: Time Is Not Even, Space Is Not Empty
2020 Fall
A Body in Places: Distance is Malleable
2019 Fall
2018 Fall
2017 Spring