YOSHIKO CHUMA
CHOREOGRAPHER and PERFORMANCE ARTIST
I have been in NYC over 44 years now since 1976 and I have many thoughts about my Asian geography. I need to share this link at this moment : Yangon is burning now :
Dead End Falling – Secret Journey
Cutting-edge choreographer/director/instigator/movement-explorer/performer, Yoshiko Chuma continues a lifetime obsession with the mythology of danger. Landing in New York in 1976, Chuma settled in lower downtown Manhattan, labelled as a dangerous place to be at the time. Devoid of the culture and inflation you see before you now, Yoshiko managed to begin her career in lower Manhattan, spanning an impressive 40 year career to date.
Creating over 100 productions, including company works, commissions and site-specific events, Chuma is constantly challenging the notion of performance for both audience and participants. Crossing physical and metaphorical borders along the way, quite literally, Chuma has placed herself in danger's way for the sake of art.
She has crossed the border between East and Central Europe in the earlier 80sʼ to 90sʼ, crossed the border to Palestine for over 10 years since 2005, the border between Albania and Kosovo in 2007, the border to Afghanistan in 2014, the border to Maracaibo, Venezuela in 2014 among many more.
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La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club and Mount Tremper Arts
EVERY SATURDAY MORNING LIVE | SML: https://ychuma.wixsite.com/peterpleyer
Forbidden realms for some but centers of creation for Chuma, as her visits to these locations challenge preconceived ideas of danger and have brought about some of the most beautiful experiences. Chuma intentionally proposes to confuse documentation with history, recreating segments from her own documented events. She never gives herself any boundaries or let them interfere with her work. Making art is not her intention at all. All of her efforts are oriented towards giving to performances that have never been seen before.
Having received no formal dance training, she pursues spontaneous and experimental techniques and methods of construction. Her creative process begins with single movement (dance) or abstract image conveyed to her film making pattern. She once presented a crumpled piece of drowning to her team and requested a single movement that expressed similar qualities. Project after project, year after year, she upends conventional notions of dance and disrupts accepted characteristics of performance. Her performances not only stand apart from the genealogy of dance but also resist definition and confound interpretation – endless peripheral borders.
River to River Festival
Renowned choreographer Yoshiko Chuma fuses live music, dance, text, and performance into a unique multidisciplinary work. This world-premiere is set to a newly commissioned score from composer John King. Chuma brings her inimitable adventurous sensibility together with a team of remarkable collaborators to create a signature spectacle.
July 7 & 8. Sitelines Presented by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Video by Creative Arson © 2010 Downtown Alliance
SECRET JOURNEY
14.10.2017 | National Gallery in Prague
The motion-visual installation Secret Journey of the established instigator, director and movement-explorer Yoshiko Chuma is connected to exhibition Ai Wei-Wei. Law of the Journey and through movement it brings a new perspective and new experience of perceiving a conceptual work. Eighty performers, five professionals and seventy-five participants representing the public will through movement expression mediate and deepen the message of one of the most influential contemporary artists.
Ai Wei-Wei’s exhibition in the National Gallery in Prague reflects essential socio-political issue of recent years – the refugee crisis. Visitors will see the much discussed work set in motion by a fascinating number of performers under the direction of a choreographer who has been focusing on reflection of social issues for the last twenty years. The performance will be presented only once as a unique connection of two renowned controversial artists. Artists who project their personal experiences and feelings into their work in a way that astonishes and attracts audiences from all around the world.
Part of the installation is the extracts from the choreography "The Rite of Spring" of Jiří Bartovanec. Dancers:
Kristýna Hebelková, Barbora Křížová, Jaroslav Lambor, Lucie Matoušková, Daniel Matušů, Patrik Miker, Jan Razima, Eva Rezová, Denisa Šeleverová, Barbora Vaňková, Lenka Vořechovská, Tereza Weinlichová
The School of Hard Knocks
Designers, Choreographers, Dance Artists, Musicians, Actors
The School of Hard Knocks is a New York-based collective of choreographers, dancers, actors, singers, musicians, designers, and visual artists under the artistic direction of Yoshiko Chuma. Since premiering at the 1980 Venice Biennale, this award-winning company has created and performed over 60 original works. Its purpose is to create, perform, encourage and sponsor experimental and multi-disciplinary and multi-media work. The School of Hard Knocks takes its name from the American idiom meaning to learn things the hard way on the proverbial "street," and is an ongoing phenomenon—its shape as diverse as the situations the company performs in—from intimate living rooms and street performances to formal theatre/dance concerts to large-scale spectacles. Company activities include an annual New York season, ongoing development and rehearsal of new works, and performances/residencies and collaborations with local artists on tour throughout the United States, East and Central Europe, Asia, Middle East, and South America.
Over the course of the company's history, more than 2,000 people have performed under Chuma's direction. Notable international performers have been involved in the School of Hard Knocks over its 40 year history, including Stephen Petronio, Vicky Schick, Jodi Melnick, David Zambrano, Sasha Waltz, Sarah Michelson, DD Dorvillier, Allyson Green, Miraim Parker, Simon Courchel, John Jasperse, David Dorfman, and many others.
