Yoshiko Chuma

Who is Yoshiko Chuma?

Yoshiko Chuma is a dancer, a choreographer and the director of the Bessie Award winning performance art group The School of Hard Knocks. Described in 2007 by Bloomberg as "a fixture on New York's downtown scene for over a quarter- century", her work spans from early "absurdist gaiety" to more recent serious reflection, which nevertheless represents the "maverick imagination and crazy-quilt multimedia work" for which the artist is known. Dance commentators have found her work difficult to classify; in a 2006 profile, Dance Magazine speculated that "One might call her a postmodern choreographer, a movement designer, or a visual artist whose primary medium is human beings--dancers, musicians, pedestrians". Chuma favors abstract art and discourages efforts to interpret her work, telling Bloomberg that "What I do is ambiguous. I don't have a statement. If I had a statement, I'd be a writer". In 2007, Chuma received a Bessie Award honoring her sustained achievements as a choreographer.