Collaborators David Huggins and Lauren Eiko investigate the fictions and non-fictions inherent in the ongoing discovery and construction of personal cultural identities, through a choreographic framework. Additional collaborators are ‘teacher’ Akashi-Suma, Ryuichi Fujimura and Eugene Choi.
How do we learn and create with a teacher at a distance; what does this do to our ability to position ourselves in the role of a student? Furthermore, this raises the question of what or who is a teacher and what is a learning experience in this present moment of bodily separation and online saturation. Investigating how we learn together-separately also connects to personal experiences of identity forming across cultural and spatial boundaries, which are shared experiences between all the collaborators in this work.04
Online de Odorō (Let’s dance online) is a performance film by dancers Lauren Eiko and David Huggins, commissioned by the Japan Foundation, Sydney, chronicling their attempts to create a performance in separation, but still together across distance and bad internet connections.
Short excerpt of a performance originally conceived for March Dance 2020 (cancelled due to COVID).
Image credit: David Huggins and Lauren Eiko