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Eiko and Koma Nurture a Tree in Brooklyn
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15094 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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4 / 1989 |
2,054 Words |
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Gary Parks
Gary Parks is the news editor of Dance Magazine. |
Over the past decade and a half, the Japanese-born team of Eiko and Koma has developed a body of work that is uniquely its own. Although they are usually reviewed by dance critics, their art is closer to the great tradition of silent acting you can see in films made before the sound era. Theirs is a powerful art, due both to their great presence on stage and to their subject matter: life after man's fall from grace.
Some writers have speculated that the tortured figures Eiko and Koma depict in their works can be seen either as primordial tribespeople, a la Kei Takei (to name another Japanese artist now based in New York), or as survivors of a global disaster yet to come. I don't see a focus on either the past or the future. As I understand it, Eiko and Koma mean to show us a hell that exists right now.
Meaningful Concept
But with the premiere of Tree, first shown last fall at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival, the husband-and-wife team seems to have provided us, for the first time, with a glimpse of redemption. Tree is the first work by Eiko and Koma to hint that hope may be a concept with some meaning.
In so doing, they have not undercut the meaning or impact of their earlier work, which had become an increasingly grim portrait of humankind. Rather, like a single stroke of bright color on a dark canvas, the fragile beauty of Tree underscores the seriousness of their older dances. If two beings can, truly, combine their lives into a meaningful whole--and I think this is the implication of Tree, though Eiko and Koma are never
... (1998 of 11766 Characters)
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