Program

Conceived and performed by Eiko Otake

Music composed and performed by David Krakauer

Dramaturg Iris McCloughan

Rehearsal and Research Assistant Allison Hsu

Photos by William Johnston

Co-presented by NYU Skirball, Battery Park City Authority, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC).

Note from the Artist

Thank you for being with me today. This monologue, Slow Turn, follows my personal memories of 9/11 and the days and years after. I have rarely spoken in my performances, but today, I’m speaking to you. Being here together, I hope each of us can remember what happened 20 years ago. By doing so, I also hope we can sustain our mourning. Thank you for listening.

Special Thanks

Lili Chopra, Jay Wegman, Abigail Ehrlich, Zachary Spitzer, Shana Crawford, Elisabeth Skjaervold, Iphigenia Seong, Amy Coombs, Don Short, and all the staff of LMCC, NYU Skirball, and Battery Park City Authority producing this performance. David Krakauer for coming back here with me. My team: Iris McCloughan, Allison Hsu, Yiru Chen, William Johnston, Ivan Sygoda, and Paula Lawrence.

Elizabeth Thompson for the LMCC residency at the World Trade Center in 2000. Aviva Davidson, the Executive and Artistic Director of Dancing in the Streets, for having produced the premiere of Eiko & Koma’s Offering in Belvedere Plaza and a subsequent series of free performances in five more Manhattan parks in 2002. Chicago Art Institute Research Fellows, Mary Jane Jacobs and Alan Labb, for having produced They did not hesitate, the sister piece to Slow Turn, in Chicago.

John Killacky and friends for supporting me to take a new step by creating a monologue. Kathleen Tagg and Liz Sargent for their help and advice. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts for archival documentation of this performance.

The late Kyoko Hayashi and Sam Miller for their continued inspiration.

Land Acknowledgement

We want to acknowledge that the work we are doing to support artists and communities is happening on the traditional lands of the Lenape people. We are situated on the Lenape Island of Manahatta, today known as New York, and more broadly in Lenapehoking. We offer our respect to the Lenape and other Indigenous caretakers of these lands and waters; and to their elders who have lived here, who live here now, and who will live here in the future.

Bios

EIKO OTAKE

Born and raised in Japan and a resident of New York since 1976, Eiko Otake is a movement-based, interdisciplinary artist. After working for more than 40 years as Eiko & Koma, she now performs as a soloist and directs her own projects collaborating with a diverse range of artists.

Eiko’s site-specific solo project A Body in Places began with a 12-hour performance at the Philadelphia 30^th Street Station and has extended to over 70 sites since. In 2016, she was the subject of Danspace Project’s month-long Platform of the same title. In addition, Eiko has performed alone in many locations of post-nuclear meltdown Fukushima for her multi-year work A Body in Fukushima, her collaboration with historian and photographer William Johnston. The project has resulted in the publication of a photo/essay book and a seven-hour video with which Eiko performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Starting with the World Trade Center in 2000, LMCC offered many residencies to both Eiko & Koma and Eiko herself. Three consecutive River To River Festivals (2014–2016) presented Eiko’s first independent work Two Women; her solo works A Body in a Station, A Body on Wall Street, A Body on Governors Island; the video installation A Body with Water; and the experimental Talking Duets with Emmanuelle Huynh and Okwui Okpokwasili. These Duets and conversations with Sam Miller led Eiko to develop her extensive Duet Project (2017-), in which she engages with artists of varied backgrounds and practices. Duet Project will have its New York premiere at NYU Skirball in April 2022.

Invited by Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts, Eiko created Virtual Studio where she shares her work and dialogues during the pandemic. Eiko performed live at Greenwood Cemetery in fall of 2020, and in spring 2021, she opened Tokyo Real Underground Festival and in August premiered the monologue piece They did not hesitate in Chicago. www.eikootake.org

DAVID KRAKAUER

Grammy-nominated clarinet soloist, band leader and composer David Krakauer has been praised internationally as a key innovator in modern klezmer as well as a major voice in classical music.

A symphonic soloist of “astounding virtuosity and charisma” (Detroit Free Press), Krakauer frequently appears with the world’s finest orchestras, quartets and ensembles including the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Kronos Quartet, Baltimore Symphony, Eiko & Koma, Emerson Quartet, Detroit Symphony, Orchestre de Lyon, Tokyo Quartet, and the Seattle Symphony. Krakauer’s bands Ancestral Groove and Abraham Inc (co-led by Krakauer, Socalled, and Fred Wesley) tour and appear at major festivals internationally. In his project with renowned South African pianist Kathleen Tagg, Krakauer’s sound is yet again re-contextualized with loops, samples, and extended techniques. Most recently, Krakauer and Tagg have co-composed a clarinet concerto and the score for the film Minyan by director Eric Steel.

Krakauer’s discography contains some of the most important clarinet recordings of recent decades, including ​The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind​ (Osvaldo Golijov and the Kronos Quartet/Nonesuch) and The Twelve Tribes​ (Label Bleu), designated jazz album of the year 2001 in Germany. He has also recorded with Itzhak Perlman/the Klezmatics (Angel) and Dawn Upshaw/Osvaldo Golijov (Deutsche Gramophon). Recent releases are concerti written for Krakauer by composers Wlad Marhulets and Mathew Rosenblum.

An esteemed educator, David Krakauer teaches at the Manhattan School of Music, the Mannes College of Music, and The Bard Conservatory. www.davidkrakauer.com

IRIS MCCLOUGHAN

Iris McCloughan is a trans artist, writer, and performer in Brooklyn. Their performance work has been presented in New York by The Poetry Project, Movement Research, and Ars Nova, among others. They are the author of several chapbooks of poetry, including Triptych (2021, greying ghost) and Bones to Peaches (2021, Seven Kitchens Press). Since 2014, they have collaborated with Eiko Otake as a dramaturg and performer across her omnibus projects A Body in Places and The Duet Project.

PRESENTING PARTNERS

NYU Skirball holds close James Baldwin’s dictum that “artists are here to disturb the peace.” Our mission is to present adventuresome, transdisciplinary work that inspires yet frustrates, confirms yet confounds, entertains yet upends. We proudly embrace renegade artists who surprise, productions that blur aesthetic boundaries, and thought-leaders who are courageous, outrageous, and mind-blowing. We are NYU’s largest classroom. We want to feed your head. Visit us at 566 LaGuardia Place in Manhattan and online at nyuskirball.org

Established in 1968, the Hugh L. Carey Battery Park City Authority is a New York State Public Benefit Corporation charged with developing and maintaining a well-balanced community on the Lower West Side of Manhattan. Battery Park City’s 92- acre site has achieved worldwide acclaim as a model for community renewal in planning, creating, and maintaining a balance of commercial, residential, retail and park space. For more info visit: bpca.ny.gov.

Founded as Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, LMCC serves, connects and makes space for artists and community.

LMCC Serves Artists through:

• Residencies that enable artists to experiment and develop their work and ideas, with professional development, financial training and networking opportunities
• Grant funding to artists that support local/neighborhood projects
• Presentation opportunities that allow artists to share their work and creative process with the public

LMCC Serves Community through:

• Free public programs in Lower Manhattan that activate neighborhoods and bring people together through performances and rich artistic experiences
• Access to artists and the artmaking process to build connections and dialogue between artists and audiences
• Grant funding for neighborhood arts and community-based organizations

Since 1973, LMCC has been the quiet champion for independent artists in New York City and the cultural life force of Lower Manhattan. LMCC.net