Directed and choreographed by Benjamin Kimitch, and conceived for Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, Ko-bu is a solo for Kimitch’s collaborator, dancer Julie McMillan. Reimagined here for The Noguchi Museum’s indoor-outdoor galleries around sunrise and sunset, Ko-bu seeks to create a sensory landscape in which to contemplate grief and loss through a series of articulated pauses and sustained images.

The choreography emerges from years of assembling religious images, in particular those of Flying Apsaras and Bodhisattvas featured in the historic Buddhist Dunhuang cave murals of northern China. The choreography is further developed through Kimitch’s research into the last compositions written by western composers in the classical music canon. Ko-bu is set to Charles Ives’ posthumously realized Orchestral Set No. 3, which serves as a poetic guide for the work.

Directed and Choreographed by Benjamin Kimitch
Performed by and Created with Julie McMillan
Clothes by TOME
Music by Charles Ives. Orchestral Set No. 3 (Movements I and II edited by David Gray Porter; Movement III realized by Nors Josephson)

Benjamin Kimitch is a fourth-generation Japanese American from Eden Prairie, Minnesota. He lives in Brooklyn, NY. His choreography has been commissioned, supported and presented by Danspace Project, The Kitchen, Roulette, 92nd Street Y, Movement Research at Judson Church, and Brooklyn Arts Exchange. Kimitch is currently Senior Producer at Performance Space 122, and a U.S.-Japan Exchange Curator with the National Performance Network. He holds a BFA in Dance from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and received additional training from Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance and Shanghai Theater Academy Traditional Peking Opera School.

Julie McMillan is originally from San Francisco and is a long time collaborator with Benjamin Kimitch. She holds a BFA in Dance and Economics from NYU Tisch School of the Arts and is currently a Post-Baccalaureate Pre-Health Candidate at Hunter College. She has previously performed with Summation Dance, Peninsula Ballet Theatre, and Moving Arts and has trained with LINES Ballet, NCSA, and the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance in Austria.