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Manuel Neri’s 1980 drawing Japanese Dancer Series No. 2 [Makiko] is a companion to an artwork of the same name but numbered 12. This black charcoal and bluish-gray pigment artwork was made on white paper almost three-and-a-half feet tall by almost two-and-a-half feet wide. In it, artist Makiko Nakamura is in profile, facing the left. She is captured with her back straight and knees deeply bent, crouching near the ground almost to sitting. She is outlined with thick lines of charcoal, sometimes pressed lightly enough against the paper that it appears to be only dark gray, not fully black. Her head, hair, and the bottom of her kimono are filled in with wide, smudgy charcoal lines. A dark black rectangle of very thin, tangled lines sits at her waist, perhaps representing her obi, or waist sash, though it does not appear to wrap around her. A brush with the gray pigment was swept across and in front of her to apply a thin wash. Radiating out from all around her, especially her head and torso, are small drips and faint smudges of this gray. Although blue-gray, against the white paper, they give the appearance that Makiko is glowing.

In this nearly monochromatic artwork, the dancer is anonymous. In fact, her head and hair are filled in such that it can be hard to tell if she appears to be facing forward with a shadow across her face or with her head turned away. Her arms may be tucked in front of her, but they were not drawn; nor does the figure have feet. She is, more than anything else, a strong suggestion of a Japanese dancer. The biggest clues are her hair pulled back and gathered at the nape of her neck and the way the stiff collar of her kimono is pulled away to reveal the back of her neck.