La guerra ci rimpicciolisce tutti
La guerra è grottesca
L’inerzia è spesso pericolosa
La guerra uccide non solo le persone dei paesi nemici, ma anche la propria gente
La guerra rende l’immoralità una norma

If the theme of the 2026 Venice Dance Biennale declares that Time Does Not Exist, the duet What Is War (at Piccolo Arsenale Theatre on July 31 and August 1) offers a deeply political counterpoint: the trauma of war does not unfold in linear time, but embeds itself within the body. On stage are two leading figures of contemporary dance and performance. Japanese artist Eiko Otake, co-founder of the legendary duo Eiko & Koma, has spent decades redefining movement theatre in the United States, while Chinese choreographer Wen Hui, founder of Beijing’s Living Dance Studio, is a pioneer of independent contemporary dance in China, known for treating the body as a “social archive.”
Thirty years after their first meeting, the two artists bring together their personal histories into a multimedia work inspired by a shared journey to the sites of the Nanjing Massacre. At its core lies one of the most painful chapters of twentieth-century Asia: the experience of the “comfort women,” thousands of women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army during World War II. In response to this unresolved trauma and to ongoing conflicts, Otake and Wen Hui adopt the stripped-down language of “poor theatre” and the radical exposure of the aging body, transforming private memory into a collective act of resistance.

You have been friends for thirty years, and come from countries with a history of conflict and mutual animosity. Wen Hui has spoken of being moved when Eiko, visiting Beijing in 2020, asked to go together to the Nanjing Massacre Museum – she hadn’t expected a Japanese person to want to go there.
How did your collaboration on What Is War come about?
Eiko Otake First, an officer at Asian Cultural Council asked me if I had an artist in China whom I wanted to visit for a month because they were starting a new fellowship of this kind, and I said, “Yes, I want to visit Wen Hui.” I have known her since 1995. We met when my partner Koma and I performed in Guangdong and saw her work with her partner in the same festival. When she visited New York, she and I saw more pieces from each other. We became friends, but we had never spent extended time together. I also thought it would be a great opportunity for me to experience contemporary China with her help. When I teach in the US, I often have students from China and thought if I go there and understand better about China, I might be able to offer better support to them.
Once there, for the first two weeks I stayed with her in her apartment, we talked non-stop. I do not think I have ever talked with one person so much in such a short amount of time. She opened her schedule for me, so we were really there for each other. Although the grant did not require us to collaborate, from the beginning, we had a desire to collaborate. However, Wen Hui reminded me that we had to “start from zero.” Wen Hui arranged for me to give two presentations and two workshops in China, and she helped me to prepare for these events. I started each by acknowledging and apologizing for what Japan historically did in colonizing and waging war on China. That led to a whole conversation about what each of us knew about the Second World War, Japan’s colonization of China and neighboring countries, and the Vietnam War, all of which were very important elements of my upbringing though I was not born until 1952, 7 years after World War II ended.
We were also aware that the premiere and the U.S. tour would be in 2025, which is 80 years after the end of World War II and 50 years after the end of the Vietnam War, a very important year to reflect on war, especially for me as I am Japanese and I live in America.
Wen Hui, having lived in Germany for several years, felt the weight of war as  Russia invaded Ukraine. For me Ukraine is where my friend lives. I also used to live in Germany, so I felt I had some understanding how borders and countries are so much closer within Europe. And now, we both have watched with horror, the October 7 attack followed by a more escalated series of massive violence done by the U.S. and Israel. Wars are going on and on. Our project is our small attempt to recognize what is going on in relation to what has happened in our history.

Wen Hui It was precisely because of that reunion with Eiko in Beijing in January 2020 – we spent three unforgettable weeks together, traveling through Beijing, Nanjing, and Kunming – that I was truly moved when Eiko mentioned wanting to visit the museum in Nanjing. During that trip, we talked about our personal family memories. At the same time, while visiting the Exhibition Hall at the Site of the Former Liji Lane “Comfort Station” in Nanjing, we were deeply shaken by the faces of the elderly people frozen in time on the walls of that building complex. Their experiences seemed closely connected to our own. But at the time, we hadn’t planned to create a film. In the summer of 2021, with the entire world in lockdown – Eiko in New York and me in Beijing – we began collaborating on a documentary titled No Rule Is Our Rule. During the editing process, we rediscovered that both of our families carried memories tied to a war, and I hope more people will realize that war affects each and every one of us.

What did it mean to bring to the stage family memories that had never met before?
E.O. Wars are declared between nations, but it is the people who suffer and who fight who are killed and affected the most. I told Wen Hui about my parents and my uncle who was a POW in Siberia and could not return to Japan until 1949. As a result of that conversation, Wen Hui inquired about her mother and found out that her grandmother died during Japan’s air raid on her hometown. It shocked me that she did not even know her grandmother’s name. But it also made me imagine what post-war China was like with the revolution, famines, and political upheavals. Wen Hui reminded me how personal stories are powerful, differently from other views of society and history. Performing this work, we also realized that when we talked about our family members’ stories, a good number of audience members shared their family members’ personal stories with us and with others. Now, many of those who experienced World War II have died. I feel a powerful urge to carry some of their voices that are left in my mind and body.
I want to carry it not as information but as an episode that sticks to people’s minds. In this digital age, many people see the images of war through films and video games. For people to listen to my and Wen Hui’s voices and see our bodies is a very analogue experience that ultimately calls upon the memories of their own or of others they know.

Eiko, you worked for over forty years as Eiko & Koma, then from 2014 began a completely different path as an independent artist. Wen Hui, you are among the founders of the first independent dance company in Beijing and have been using the body as a tool of social documentation for thirty years. How did these two very different paths come together – and what did each of you have to give up in order to find a common language?
E.O. In so many ways my life and work changed when I began working without Koma, but I am still essentially the same person. I work on a small scale, and I do not choreograph others. I am not a choreographer except for myself. I work on all other aspects of the production – sound, video, words, and movements. I do not think I gave up on anything. I began my Duet Project in 2017 after doing many solo performances. Working with other artists I deeply respect, one at a time, is a deep learning experience. At my age, when I work with one other person, I reflect on how one of us will die before the other. So working and performing together becomes memory-making.
Yes, we grew up in different countries at different times in different social, political, and historical situations. But we have known each other for a long time, and from the first time we saw each other’s work, we felt kinship, which is different from similarities. However differently we arrived at it, we appreciate each other’s aesthetic. A form of ‘poor theatre’ in an Asian sense, resisting decoration and ornamentation.
We each have created many works, so in this collaboration, we only do what we both agree upon and we both agree that war is probably the most important subject we can challenge ourselves with and for that we need each other.
As we developed this work, we noticed some thoughts:
War makes each of us small.
War is grotesque.
Momentum is often dangerous.
War kills not only people of enemy countries but its own people.
War makes immoral a norm.

W.H. We have a very important working method in this collaboration: if either of us says “No,” we must rethink our decision. Sometimes this may mean scrapping an entire segment or structure until we both agree. It’s a valuable learning process, though it can sometimes take a lot of time.

Since its very origins theatre has shown the horrors of war – and violence against women’s bodies in wartime is a theme that spans the centuries, from sexual slavery in Homer’s Iliad to the comfort women of the twentieth century, whom you also evoke on stage. Yet nothing seems to change. Is What Is War a cry of personal sensibility, or do you believe it can also have a social function?
E.O. This is a serious question. My favorite writer Kyoko Hayashi says this in her work: “Looking back after many years, ‘what happened becomes unbelievable.’ It is therefore necessary to confirm through writing that what happened really happened.”
We both feel it is so important to talk, to examine what we experienced and what we learned from others. We are not only what we experienced but we are who we are because we learn from others, listening, reading, seeing, and imagining. Each of us can carry other people’s experiences and thoughts. We are horrified that war violence continues in such magnitude as we speak. Not that we want to tell others what to do about it because we really do not know how to stop wars and powers. But honestly, we feel humans should not engage in war. Children should never be killed. People can disagree, but we need to develop ways not ever committing or allowing massive violence.
While we are powerless in immediately stopping wars. Art opens up viewers, readers, and listeners. When a viewer is moved by or feels touched by an artist’s work, that person is celebrating their own humanity, that artist and other people’s potentials. Nobody hates oneself when one is moved by art or humanistic acts. That is a great point to stand, observe, talk, and try to acknowledge our difficult time and conditions but not stop working as artists.
Having been born in 1952, the year the American occupation ended, I grew up in post-war Japan. My parents, my teachers, writers I read, and painters and filmmakers whose works I saw are mostly people who experienced the war. “No more war” has been the most important cry among the people who experienced the war.
When we perform What Is War, many individuals come to us to share their experiences in a war or stories they were told. That makes us know this piece is doing some work within some of our viewers. For humanities sake, we do not really want to forget what is important even though we individually might be tempted to forget.

W.H. That’s a great question. The personal is political. Precisely because this violence against women’s bodies during wartime continues today – unchanged and rarely seen – we must speak out. If we don’t keep speaking out, how will young people ever know?

In my school days we had classes on how to recognize unexploded ordnance in the ground – war was a very close reality. Today young generations seem to experience it as a distant event, on a screen. How do you bring young people closer to your work?
E.O. Surely by performing, by talking, by showing images and films, and by discussing. in all, by being there for them eye to eye. I was not alive during World War II but I heard stories and often their regrets from my elders that helped me to grasp the stories when I read. Reading can be a very strong experience itself if a reader is already absorbed in some connections to the contents and can FEEL emotions.
I become naked in this piece. Seeing an old woman naked is an experience itself. It is not at all necessary that they understand or like what we do. But what is important for us is that young people might remember seeing us and hearing us. They can use that experience as their own. It is THEY who saw the piece and even if it was difficult that experience is still THEIR OWN. These analogue experiences as a reader, as a viewer, and in conversation keep humans as such.

W.H. Eiko has been teaching at universities in the United States. Last year, while we were rehearsing and touring there, we shared our work with students at schools in every city we visited and even invited them to participate in our creative process. Of course, I think this is far from enough. How to engage young people in social life is a major issue in today’s world.

Between the two of you, you have experience in installations, site-specific performances, film and documentary. Yet What Is War chooses the theatre: a frontal, enclosed space, with a seated audience. What does that form offer that the others don’t, when the subject is war and memory?
E.O. This piece took this form as our lead commissioner had a theater for us to premiere this piece. But we always chose more intimate theaters than big ones when we had a choice.
This is a theatrical work with minimal set and simple but evocative light. We do not hide. We reveal. We also included projections and speaking. Altogether audiences are there from the beginning to the end unless they really cannot stomach it. In a theater different individuals understand and experience the piece differently but they are seeing the same scene at the same time in the order we construct. That is the beauty of theater, and we worked hard to create scenes and how they connect or rupture. We also have made a documentary film that is usually shown as a part of our residency, but unfortunately not this time.
It is indeed possible for us to make another film on this piece or create installations or exhibitions. What we started was an offer from commissioners who have theaters. We like theaters but we both can work in other formats, which we very much might do on this piece, on this content: WHAT IS WAR.

W.H. Watching this piece is an extremely challenging experience – even quite brutal for the audience. We do not seek to comfort the audience; they are forced to sit in the distant audience seats, and the question we pose is: War concerns everyone. The audience is compelled to grapple with this question in that dark space. For some, it is the first time they realize their own family is connected to war. During our performances in the United States, we often encountered audience members who shared their families’ war memories with us after the show.

You are artists of Eastern formation with long experience in the West – from Trisha Brown to Pina Bausch… Yet we have the impression that the flow in the other direction is insufficient. Few Western artists have deep experience of Eastern dance and theatre. How do you explain this?
E.O. I cannot answer this question since it takes a wider and general view between East and West.  That construct has been ever changing in detail in this world. Even in history some individuals traveled to Asia with deep interests and for a long time, Van Gogh was deeply influenced by Japanese wood cut, and the Polish director Wajda also said he was amazed when he first saw Japanese prints and paintings. Maybe because the colonization of Asia by many western countries made for uneven exchange? Or artists in the East were fed a view that they had a lot to learn from the West? I really should not answer this question. And I am more interested in focusing on individuals and their choices. I did not leave Japan because I wanted to learn from the West. I left Japan so as to go “somewhere else.”  Lately many foreign places are felt closer by planes and we can see many “others” on screen. What’s important is to follow one’s desire and construct self.  In big cities like New York where I live, artists are coming from many different cultures and many different countries. Now we can be deeply moved by “the other”, which is profound and another strong reason to stop wars.

W.H. I wouldn’t view the East and the West as opposites. I’ve always believed it’s a matter of personal choice.

Biennale Danza 2026 takes as its theme Time Does Not Exist. Your work excavates memory – personal, familial, historical. How does time relate to war when it is not linear, when the past never fully passes?
E.O. I do feel time does exist. In our everyday life and in our memories and in our wishes. But I do think time moves grotesquely and unevenly for the body and mind of an individual different from others. Our present includes many pasts and future possibilities. The duration of a half-life dictates how long a radioactive material remains dangerous or useful. Because every isotope decays at its own pace, their half-lives differ drastically but that does not mean time does not exist. It just feels not measurable in one method or from one viewpoint. Time is complex and radical. Our body shows time moves.

W.H. My understanding is that time exists within each person’s body. The trauma left by war – fear, pain, famine, and so on – never fades from the body’s memory; an entire generation, or even several generations, must bear the suffering brought about by war.