Photo: Jacob Burckhardt

Yoshiko Chuma first danced Pikkadon in 1982 as a collaboration with visual artist Jeffrey Isaac, projection artist and dancer Kaja Gam, and musician Christian Marclay. The same evening, she performed again in I Left Her Behind For You with the ensemble of The School of Hard Knocks which included Donald Fleming, Kaja Gam, Brian Moran, Gayl Taft, and Nelson Zayas. Exploring rhythmic idiosyncrasies through movement inspired by cinema, the ensemble of dancers engaged with elementary school desks. By reimagining the potential of the object as a device of expression through multi-medium performance, The School of Hard Knocks highlighted the confluence of their objecthood as with their emotional lives.