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Kimi Okada is a choreographer and former dancer who was married to Bill Irwin for five years. They met when they were both studying at Oberlin College, moved to San Francisco together, and were both involved in the Pickle Family Circus. After they divorced they continued to work together; most notably, Okada choreographed Irwin's play "Largely New York."
GREAT PERFORMANCES: Where did you meet Bill Irwin?
Kimi Okada: I met Bill at Oberlin College in 1971-72. I was a dance major at Oberlin and in my junior year. We were all abuzz in the performing arts world that Herbert Blau was coming to Oberlin. It was a great honor for [Blau] to be coming. He was a very respected experimental theater director -- very heady, very academic work. Bill came with Herbert Blau and they formed KRAKEN. KRAKEN was very isolated from the rest of the students and community. They were doing serious work. They went behind closed doors and we never saw them. But we would hear them every day. We heard these screams coming from the gym. [Laughs.]
Bill and I were together for about 11 years. We married in 1977 and split up [at] the end of '82. They were extremely formative years for both of us. It was the early '70s, and it was a golden era: it was still possible to consider the performing arts as a career that was validated. There was a real validation of professional artists. As students, at Oberlin, we had grown up in a very provocative and exciting and intellectually wonderful environment. When we graduated, there was no question that we were going to become artists.
Bill, after his work with KRAKEN, went to clown college, then came out to San Francisco. That's when the Pickle Family Circus began. We were together through all the Pickle Family Circus years, through the beginnings of his own independent work. That was the seeds of everything to come for him.
GP: Did you and Bill work together?
KO: We did work together. I always maintained a separate career as dancer and a choreographer, but I guested in many of his pieces.
GP: How did your professional relationship evolve after you and Bill were divorced?
KO: I went on to choreograph "Largely New York," which was the first time we worked together after having split up. It was a painful separation. It was hard on both of us. But ["Largely New York"] was the perfect reconciliation in many ways. Bill wanted to mock postmodern dance, which is what I grew up in: a kind of formalist, abstract, somewhat humorless dance. Not that I like to do dance that way, but I knew the genre very well. I think he knew I would be the right person for that because I not only understood that kind of dancing, but also know his work so well. It was an easy match.
GP: What is distinctive about Bill Irwin?
KO: Bill is wonderfully eccentric. He has a truly quirky physicality that is wonderfully spontaneous. There is a looseness, a release that draws from many forms: street dancing, tap dancing, break dancing. There's an elegance that can be almost Fred Astaire-like. There can be an eccentric wildness; there can be disco. He incorporates so many different physical styles; he's putting it together in his own way. His dancing always means something. It's not just making a funny dance; there's something very vulnerable about it that is charming. The best dancers have a great projection of self, but also a vulnerability that is generous. [Bill's] moving has that. He is willing to just go out there on a limb. Working with comedians like Bill, you know they have this unfettered freedom. Unlike many trained dancers, they have a freedom and a willingness to just go over the top. And it's wonderful to see. It's exciting.
Bill has a very particular rhythmic sense to the kinds of things he does. He pays homage to a lot of physical comedians. He's got a sense of comic timing in dancing. There's contrast, there's, you know, little quirks that -- that just arise out of nowhere and turn into something else.
GP: How would you describe his art?
KO: Everyone always asks me this: "What does he do?" And I would say, he's a physical comedian with great intellect. His gift is that he can take forms from popular culture and weave them into sophisticated theater.
GP: How has that theatricality evolved?
KO: I think he's become an actor in a way that he never was in the early days. When he started to do more straight-ahead theater, he refined his skills as an actor and developed as an actor.
Interview for GREAT PERFORMANCES conducted in June 2004.
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