Stone I: Eiko Otake And Margaret Leng Tan

Stone l is the first installment of a new interdisciplinary collaboration between internationally acclaimed performers, Eiko Otake and Margaret Leng Tan.

In June 2023, Eiko visited the Gylsboda Quarry while in residency in Sweden. During her time there she felt the quarry to be a violent place, stating “deep deep below I saw the machine-scarred surfaces of stones that I was not supposed to be seeing.”

The resulting video, projected onto the stone walls of the Historic Chapel, provides the setting for a performance and contemplation on the immensity of time, tension, and density that stone holds. Eiko invited Margaret to reflect with her on humans’ incessant need for material resources, a need invariably destructive to the environment. Departing from their traditional roles as dancer and pianist, the collaborators sustain each other through sound and movement.

There will be five performances of Stone I, occurring from 8:30-9:30pm on June 26th, 27th, 28th, and 29th.

Eiko Otake is a movement-based interdisciplinary artist. Born and raised in Japan and a resident of New York since 1976, her work centers on movement and visual poetry. For more than 40 years, she performed as part of Eiko & Koma, but since 2014 has focused on solo projects. Otake’s A Body in Places has been performed at over 70 sites, including The Green-Wood Cemetery in September 2020. She received a special Duke Performing Award, Bessie Award citation, an Art Matters grant, and the Anonymous Was a Woman Award. In 2023, her installation “Mother” was on view for three months in Green-Wood’s Historic Chapel, and concluded with a performance activating the site and installation titled With Mother.

Margaret Leng Tan, famously known as the “queen of the toy piano,” has been hailed by The New Yorker as “the diva of avant-garde pianism.” Her practice embraces theater, choreography, performance which has led to her acclaimed, dramatic sonic portrait, Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep. Tan is the subject of two feature documentaries and most recently, a children’s storybook, Becoming Margaret Leng Tan (Marshall Cavendish International, Asia). She is a recipient of The National Endowment for the Arts’ Solo Recitalist Award and the Cultural Medallion, Singapore’s highest artistic accolade.