Dance

In this early Tom Rubnitz, Barbara Lipp and Tom Koken collaboration, "Frieda" performs her rap song with a bevy of dolls as back-up singers and dancers. Features rock-bottom production values and song lyrics by Barbara Lipp and Tom Koken.

Offering was co-commissioned by Dancing in the Streets (New York), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, where the proscenium version premiered January 9, 2003) and the University of Arizona (Tucson).

Offering is a ritual of regeneration after loss. People everywhere have lost ideals and landscapes that were dear to them. Offering was originally developed as a mobile outdoor work. This transportable dance or living site "installation" can be brought into communities to serve a communal need for a ritual of mourning.

Circles cycle and shift in scale in this video about, through, into and out of Carol Bove’s monumental sculptures starring the exquisitely talented dancer Katie Gaydos. Circles are celestial bodies, the pendulum, the metronome, playing against the hands of a clock as Gaydos’ body traverses the forest of Bove’s sculptures, reminding us that time is nothing external, but an integral feature of our interior landscape. Bove’s title Chimes at Midnight is a reference to Orson Welles’ film of the same name.

A furniture hoist strap encircles Laurie’s waist, lifting and guiding her through this interpretation of the waltz from the ballet “The Sleeping Beauty.” The stage and setting is the parking lot behind the Electron Movers studio, Providence, Rhode Island; the hoist is operated from the fifth floor of the former Fain Carpet Building (c. 1890) at 128 North Main Street. Music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

Assisted by Alan Powell and Dennis Hlynsky.

This title is only available on Kip Fulbeck Selected Videos: Volume One.

This video was produced as a part of Eiko & Koma's exhibition Time is not Even, Space is not Empty which opened at the Zilkha Gallery in Wesleyan University in the fall of 2009. Edited by Eiko with assistance of Tara Kelton and Shoko Letton, 38 Works shows the trajectory of Eiko & Koma's career through short excerpts of most of their works created between 1976 (the year they arrived in the US) and 2009 (the year they started the Retrospective Project).

"A refreshing look at karaoke, psychedelic dance moves, and donuts all mashed together into a small and swinging film about a man who considers his private thoughts and private jokes worth sharing with a large audience. And it's unlikely that many would disagree."

--Impakt Festival, Utrecht, The Netherlands, 2001

This title is also available on Jim Finn Videoworks: Volume 1.

In collaboration with Iris McCloughan.

A compilation of five early short films made between 1966 to 1969.

Hand Movie 1966, 6:00, b&w, silent, 8mm

Close-up of a hand, the fingers of which enact a sensuous dance. Camerawork by William Davis.

Volleyball (Foot Film) 1967, 10:00 b&w, silent, 16mm

A volleyball is rolled into the frame and comes to rest. Two legs in sneakers, seen from the knees down, enter the frame and stand beside it. Cut to new angle, same characters and actions. Camerawork by Bud Wirtschafter.

In Tree Song, Eiko & Koma continue their exploration of the body as a part of the landscape and the landscape as an extension of the body. Trees have been symbols of resilience, rebirth and portals through which spirits pass. Tree Song honors the iconography of trees and the primal mysteries of landscape and the human body.

The final film in Friedland’s Movement Exercises trilogy, Trust Exercises is a hybrid experimental dance film which explores the tension between the poetics of group movement and its instrumentalization for capitalist management. Amending the choreography of team-building and the visual grammars of corporate video, Trust Exercises braids together movement from three work spaces: a fictional start-up retreat, a body work session as interview, and a dance rehearsal.

Flowers for LH reflects on the last play written by Lorraine Hansberry entitled What Use Are Flowers?

Dance: Joey Kipp
Cinematography: Steve Cossman, Cynthia Madansky
Music: Zeena Parkins

In this early Tom Rubnitz, Barbara Lipp and Tom Koken collaboration, "Frieda" performs her rap song with a bevy of dolls as back-up singers and dancers. Features rock-bottom production values and song lyrics by Barbara Lipp and Tom Koken.

An evening-length collaboration work with the celebrated avant-garde pianist Margaret Leng Tan. The stage set is by Eiko & Koma and the lighting is by David Ferri.

Commissioned by and premiered at Japan Society, New York, October 18-20, 2007, celebrating Kazuo Ohno's 101th Birthday and the 100th anniversary of Japan Society.

Commissioned by Boston Dance Umbrella, this work was created during a month-long residency in Boston. Clayton Campbell painted a mythological scene of the river that a dying person crosses to reach the world of the dead. The piece was first titled as Eye Below but later changed to By The River.

Duet for Tap and Galoshes is a visual restructuring of a real time tap performance, presented in two parts. In part one, Laurie’s feet fill the television screen, and different close-ups of the feet are edited to the beats of the tap rhythms, creating a quickly paced montage of sound and image seen from different points of view. In part two, Laurie substitutes tap shoes for a pair of semi-translucent galoshes to show the workings of her bare feet, visible through the galoshes.

Identically dressed, and with sibling-like resemblance, performance artists Trevor Martin and Kym Olsen shift between spoken word and athletic dance choreography in a collection of 29 scenes. Set in various locations--including a gymnasium, an abandoned hospital, and a trailer park circus--Martin and Olsen slip between a ventriloquist and his dummy, a seducer and his surrogate, a doctor and his patient, and synchronized dance partners. The film examines a complex social psychology--questioning the colonization of the human body for various political, medical and religious agendas.

Masked men prowling in the bushes and not touching anything but satin, dandelions and flesh.

In the nest of the sun, Xolotl, Huitzilin and Xochitl meet to recover the dance of radiation, whose colorful heat stirs the new fire of their cosmic dance. Part of the Film Tonalli.

A Body in Fukushima is a film created by dance artist Eiko Otake consisting of still photographs, inter-titles, and an original score. Photographs are selected from tens of thousands taken by historian/photographer William Johnston of Otake alone in the surreal landscapes of post-nuclear meltdown Fukushima, Japan. Otake edited the film and sound, which includes original music by Kronos Quartet’s David Harrington.