October 16, 2014

A Japanese-born and New York City-based dancer/choreographer, Eiko Otake has partnered with Takashi Koma Otake for more than forty years. Together as Eiko & Koma, they create a unique and mesmeric theater of movement out of stillness, shape, light and sound. On October 16, Eiko will visit Drexel for a lecture demonstration on “Delicious Movement as a Way of Knowing,” at 7:00pm in the Mandell Theater. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Eiko & Koma’s choreography and stagecraft is characterized by a humanistic message and bold, highly theatrical strokes. Their dozens of interdisciplinary performances have sought to subvert and transcend audiences’ everyday notions of time and space. In “Delicious Movement as a Way of Knowing,” Eiko will share video and the philosophy, politics, and varied methods of Delicious Movement, which is a theory of learning that employs images, body articulation, floor work and transformation. Delicious Movement uses imagery as inspiration and seeks to increase skill, awareness, focus, coordination and stance.

A Founding Fellow of the Center for Creative Research, Eiko Otake is a teacher and writer who has taught at Wesleyan University. Eiko & Koma have received numerous awards, including the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, the United States Artists Fellowship Award, Dance Magazine Award, and Fellowships with the MacArthur Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts and the McKnight Foundation.