Flowers Cracking Concrete: Eiko & Koma's Asian/American Choreographies

by Rosemary Candelario

Overview

Flowers Cracking Concrete is the first in-depth study of the forty-year career of Eiko & Koma—two artists from Japan who have lived and worked in New York City since the mid-1970s, establishing themselves as innovative and influential modern and postmodern dancers. They continue to choreograph, perform, and give workshops across the United States and around the world. Rosemary Candelario argues that what is remarkable about Eiko & Koma’s dances is not what they signify but rather what they do in the world. Each chapter of the book is a close reading of a specific dance that reveals a choreographic theme or concern. Drawing on interviews, live performance, videos, and reviews, Candelario demonstrates how ideas have kinesthetically and choreographically cycled through Eiko & Koma’s body of work, creating dances deeply engaged with the wider world through an active process of mourning, transforming, and connecting.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780819576484
Publisher:	Wesleyan University Press
Publication date:	07/05/2016
Pages:	302
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

ROSEMARY CANDELARIO has published work in the Journal of Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, International Journal of Screendance, The Oxford Handbook of Dance and the Popular Screen, and The Scholar & Feminist Online. She is Assistant Professor at Texas Woman’s University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
A Note About Japanese Names and Words
Introduction
From Utter Darkness to White Dance
“Good Things Under 14th Street”
Japanese/American
Dancing-with Site and Screen
Sustained Mourning
Ground Zeroes
“Take Me to Your Heart”: Intercultural Alliances
In Lieu of a Conclusion: “Step Back and Forward, and Be There”
Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Karen Shimakawa

“Flowers Cracking Concretecontributes a vital perspective to the growing scholarship on the groundbreaking artists Eiko & Koma. Professor Candelario's detailed examination of their artistic development over half a century situates it in relation to discourses of orientalism and Asian American identity in a way that is critically illuminating. It allows us to see the work of Eiko & Koma beyond the dead-ends of (orientalist) "identity" and deracinated aesthetics, while staying firmly grounded in Eiko & Koma's deeply personal and deeply political oeuvre.”

Bruce Baird

“Eiko & Koma have been staggeringly creative pillars of American dance for decades. Now, Rosemary Candelario has given them their due in this rich picture of them as politically active avant-garde performers with complex Japanese/American identities who address intercultural contact, interfacing with nature, and communal mourning.”

Judith Hamera

“Clearly written, Flowers Cracking Concrete offers both a comprehensive, invaluable analysis of Eiko and Koma’s work and a compelling, insightful examination. This book is indispensible reading for those interested in the histories and practices of contemporary concert dance, and in the luminous works of these internationally renowned artists.”

Editorial Reviews

“[D]istinctive for its extremely slow, minimalistic movement and their collaborative, hands-on approach to every aspect, from movement to costumes to sets … site-specific works aimed to convey a message about the spaces they were performed in.”—Rachel Caldwell, Dance Teacher Magazine

From the Publisher