In her indelible 41-year partnership with Koma, Eiko Otake seemed to be moving on the cusp of life—or death, depending on your angle. The Japanese transplant pared her movement down to organic necessity—as if “rolled round in earth’s diurnal course, / With rocks, and stones, and trees” (as Wordsworth put it). Since Eiko & Koma disbanded, in 2014, the incandescent Otake continues to move entropically but the work has grown more overtly political. In her latest collaboration, What is War, with the Chinese dance maverick Wen Hui, life and death are no longer unavoidable existential facts. Born in 1952, Otake grew up in the shadow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when the American victors drew up a new constitution, still in effect today. Its Article 9 states: “Aspiring sincerely to an international peace, the Japanese people forever renounce war.” For Otake, “Article 9 is in my body,” a peace amassed from war’s remains. —Apollinaire Scherr