EIKO & KOMA

 

For over thirty years, the Japanese-born choreographer/dancers Eiko & Koma have created an influential theatre of movement out of stillness, shape, light, and sound. In tribute and collaboration, acclaimed American poet Forrest Gander has written a mesmerizing series of poems—hinging around a dance schematic—that captures and extends the dancers’ performance with lyrical intensity and vividness. An excerpt of his expansive, liquid lines was threaded through Eiko & Koma’s retrospective catalogue of dance works, Time Is Not Even, Space is Not Empty.


Two larval bodies naked with faces
and seared straw in their hair hold our looking
to the dark back of and beyond

Poems from Eiko & Koma set to music by composer Alice Nakamura

Performed at Kioi Hall in Tokyo / June 2023

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“Pulitzer finalist Gander’s mesmerizing series of poems— hinging on a dance schematic—captures and extends Eiko & Koma’s performances with lyrical intensity and vividness.”
— Publishers Weekly

Video Poems

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Photograph: Jay Anderson

Photograph: by Anna Lee Campbell

 
 
Nancy Campana