Eiko Otake at the Historic Evergreen Cemetery

A Conversation & Performance with Eiko Otake & David Harrington

6 p.m. Cemetery as a Place for Art and Reflection:
Public talk with Harry Weil, Vice-President of Education and Public Programs, Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, NY

Preceding the With the Dead performance, this a public talk will draw attention to cemeteries as contemplative and complex sites in which history, memories, community, and artistry converge. Harry Weil will converse with Evergreen Cemetery Director Cheryl D. Godbout and Dianne Hartshorn representing Heritage Evergreen.

Cemeteries are places of memory and contemplation, where a community’s stories and histories lie, where we are reminded of our mortality. During the pandemic, Eiko performed in two cemeteries to reflect on and converse with the dead.

You can’t really come to the cemetery and not think about death or the people who have died. We know more about living. But we all die. I thought that performing was my practice of dying. But the practice of dying is not dying. We learn about death by attending to other people’s dying. But we also learn about death by missing the dead. —Eiko Otake

7 p.m. With the Dead
performance

As Eiko Otake’s six-month exhibition at the Fine Art Center at Colorado College nears its closing on July 30, Eiko will return to Colorado Springs with David Harrington, the artistic director and founder of the world-renowned Kronos Quartet. Their long-time friendship is matched by their international recognition as some of the most notable performing artists working today. With the Dead is an adaptation of Otake’s 2020 performance at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY. Colorado Springs community members and former students of Eiko will join these two distinguished artists in their performance at the historic Evergreen Cemetery so we can collectively reflect on dying and the dead.

I dance thinking about the recent dead, and the dead from the past centuries, including many whose graves were never built. —Eiko Otake

8 p.m. Reception

Eiko and David will talk with audience members and participants.

In celebration of Otake’s solo exhibition I Invited Myself, vol. II, the Department of Theater and Dance at Colorado College is hosting a series of two-day events in the Colorado Springs community.

All events are free and open to the public.

A Friendship in Motion

With the rich collaborative history between Kronos Quartet and Eiko & Koma, David continues to gift Eiko with his sound for her media works including the pieces shown currently at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College. In February of this year, Eiko created eyes closed, a new piece she performed with Kronos Quartet at Carnegie Hall which was hailed by the New York Times as “spectacularly imaginative.” The coming collaboration marks David’s first time performing with Eiko as a solo violinist.

David Harrington

The Kronos Quartet has broken the boundaries of what string quartets do. —The New York Times

David Harrington is the artistic director, founder and violinist of the Kronos Quartet. For 50 years, San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet has combined a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to continually reimagine the string quartet experience.

In the process, Kronos has become one of the most celebrated and influential groups of our era, performing thousands of concerts worldwide, releasing more than 70 recordings of extraordinary breadth and creativity, and collaborating with many of the world’s most accomplished composers and performers.

Through its nonprofit organization, Kronos Performing Arts Association (KPAA), Kronos has commissioned more than 1,000 works and arrangements for string quartet —including the recently completed 50 for the Future library of free, educational repertoire. Kronos has received more than 40 awards, including three Grammy Awards and the Polar Music, Avery Fisher, and Edison Klassiek Oeuvre Prizes—among the most prestigious awards given to musicians.

Eiko Otake

Otake dances with a stillness at once excruciating and exquisite. —Jill J. Tan for Guernica

Born and raised in Japan and a resident of New York since 1976, Eiko Otake is a movement-based, interdisciplinary artist. She worked for more than 40 years as Eiko & Koma, but since 2014 has been working on her own projects.

Eiko has performed her solo project, A Body in Places, at over 70 sites, including Danspace Project PLATFORM and three full-day performances at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2017, she launched The Duet Project, a series of experiments with a diverse range of artists both living and dead. For the occasion of the 20-year anniversary of 9/11, Eiko presented her monologue Slow Turn.

Since 2014, Eiko and photographer historian William Johnston visited irradiated Fukushima several times to capture photographs of her dancing in Fukushima. A Body in Fukushima, the book, was published in 2021, and Eiko edited a film of the same name, which premiered at MoMA’s Doc Fortnight 2022.

Eiko is the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, Doris Duke Award, Scripps American Dance Festival Award, and a Bessie’s Awards and its special citation.