Secret Journey: Stop Calling Them Dangerous #4 Love Story, Palestine

CRS and The School of hard knocks present Secret Journey: Stop Calling Them Dangerous #4: Love Story, Palestine a long-table discussion between Yoshiko Chuma and assembled artists/panelists with Ryuji Yamaguchi  https://jordantimes.com/news/local/experimental-dance-performance-delves-questions-identity-and-self from Jordan. The panel symposium will conduct several discussions that will explore, examine, and translate stories about oppression, marginalization, prejudice, and profiling. To aid in the moderation of the discussions, a simple and engaging structure will be introduced at the beginning of the panel symposium; this will allow for productive communication and thoughtful transparency. The members of the audience will have to suggest a topic related to the aforementioned categories.

Suggested donation $20. No RSVP required.

CRS is a place where emerging artists can learn from established artists, share their work, and explore new ideas.

Photo of Yoshiko Chuma by Robert Flynt

Landing in New York City in 1976, Yoshiko Chuma quickly settled in Manhattan’s East Village – a place that, at the time, was often labeled as “seedy”, “dirty”, and/or “dangerous”. Indeed, in 1976, the East Village was mostly devoid of the culture and inflation you would see before you today, and it is here that Chuma began her career, now spanning an impressive 45 years to date. She is notoriously well-traveled, and has crossed the borders between East and Central Europe, Palestine, Albania, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and most recently, Venezuela. For some, these places have been forbidden realms, but for Chuma, these lands have become centers of creation. As she might put it, her visits to these locations have challenged what were preconceived ideas of privilege, danger, and civilization as a whole….

The School of Hard Knocks, or fully titled “Yoshiko Chuma & The School of Hard Knocks, was founded in 1983 during a tumultuous time in New York’s East Village. The name was inspired by Chuma’s interest in American idioms during her early days in the United States.   The School of Hard Knocks  favors abstract  art and discourages efforts to interpret the work, saying that “What we do is ambiguous. we don’t have a statement. If we had a statement, we would be writers. https://www.culturebot.org/2012/04/13019/yoshiko-chumas-love-story-palestine-at-lamama/     https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/12/arts/dance/love-story-palestine-by-yoshiko-chuma.html https://vimeo.com/41877261 https://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/2012/05/arts-watch-yoshiko-chuma-brings-her-love-story-palestine-to-lamama.html   http://palestine.mei.columbia.edu/news-1/2016/8/26/love-story-palestine

Panel Statement: We refute the idea of an immigration travel ban – America is a nation of immigrants. We want the participants and our audience to see the other parts of the world in a new light. This is about sharing experiences – sharing experiences of other lives and other worlds. And through our sharing, explore what can and can’t be felt through our varied cultural and historical differences.

This panel was initially conceived by Yoshiko Chuma and Megan Kendzior during an impassioned conversation at Chuma’s private residence; this took place shortly after President’s Day (the first following Trump’s election) and served as yet another inspiration for the panel’s topics/categories. The primary reason for this creation and development of this event is to give to the art scene in New York another view point to discuss the same agenda: “Stop Calling Them Dangerous.”

*Acknowledgement: Yoshiko’s experience in Palestine with dancer and activist Noora Baker (one of the leading dancers and directors of the El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe company in Ramallah, Palestine) has been a substantial inspiration for this project.

Ryuji Yamaguchi  first came to King’s Academy in 2007 as the dance program coordinator in the Department of Art, Design and Technology. During his years at King’s, he served in various roles, including dean, department head, and international student coordinator. After leaving King’s to spend a year in New York to dance and choreography while studying for his Master’s degree in educational leadership at Columbia University, Ryuji Yamaguchi returned to King’s Academy in 2017 as dance program coordinator and a class dean. In 2022, he was appointed dean of residential life. Born in Nagoya, Japan, He grew up in Japan and the United States. He attended Deerfield Academy and received his Bachelor’s degree in East Asian studies from Harvard University. His dance activities have spanned the Middle East, Europe, Japan and the United States, and he has performed in works by such choreographers as Yoshiko Chuma, Douglas Dunn, Brenda Divelbliss and Christopher Williams. Mr. Yamaguchi has collaborated with numerous Jordanian and Palestinian artists, and has invited over 40 Japanese and American artists to Jordan. As assistant director and producer to Yoshiko Chuma and The School of Hard Knocks since 2007 with six major productions in Jordan, Palestine and New York City . In 2013, he founded Jordan Youth Dance Exchange, contributing to the growth of high school dancers in Jordan.

SCHEDULE

Panelists:  Ryuji Yamaguchi, Yoshiko Chuma

7:15 PM       House Opens – snacks and drinks

7:30 PM-7:40 PM      Introductory remarks

7:40 PM -7:45 PM Introducing Ryuji Yamaguchi

7:45 PM -8:45 PM Ryuji Yamaguchi with many clips on the video . why, how, where, and what ( 2007-2022 ) – located Madoba , Amman in Jordan as Dance Artist, The educator, The leadership, The organizer, The Dancer, The producer .

8:45 PM -9:00pm the conversation between Ryuji Yamaguchi and Yoshiko Chuma

9:00 PM- 9:30 pm long table discussion

In recent years, and particularly following nationwide protests , there is a renewed interest in the day that celebrates freedom.

The School of Hard Knocks ends with some thoughts on lifestyle as the continuation of collaboration.  The way we choose to live our lives can insist on collaboration, even from afar and across Zoom. The School of Hard Knocks would like all of us to feel comfortable collaborating with each other and most importantly to do so from our own vantage point. It assembles us because we’re all very different, living in different parts of the world, focussing on different things. In fact, despite our physical distance, modern technology allows for a proliferation of access to stories and information. Where once sources were limited, we have millions of people to connect with, millions of digitized books and records, and millions of performances online waiting to be watched. But what are the risks of this world of mass information? How can we contemplate the violence and carnal danger of borders and oppression in a creative or online space ?

The School of Hard Knocks was originally the title of a production in 1980. As the production expanded in the years after, The School of Hard Knocks, as an overarching investigation of embodied movement was established in 1983. With now the 40th anniversary lurking at the horizon,  2020-2023 was conceptualized and organized to not only celebrate over four decades of collaborations with multiple generations of artists but also mark a completely new style of theatre.
1 secret anniversary
2 secret theatre, club, gallery, park, apartment, and others
3 Secret festival
4 secret audience
5 secret artists
An ongoing multi-disciplinary performance series conceived. Assembling a mosaic of films, dance, music, visual art, and narratives, we continue a lifetime investigation of ideas regarding national security, perceived dangers within borders, immigration, and war.

For more than four decades now, Yoshiko Chuma has been building unique structures in the liminal area between her native Japanese culture and her adopted American one. Using trained and pedestrian movers, virtuoso instrumentalists (who’s playing she often conducts), film, video, and sculptural forms by collaborating artists, she develops unusual time-based art works that blend the live and the recorded, the flat and the three-dimensional, people and things. Chuma’s multidisciplinary work tries to capture the contemporary world in all its complexity: speedy, multi-faceted, diverse, both conceptual and concrete. She has traveled and worked in countries around the globe, with international casts.

Forbidden realms for some but centers of creation ., as visiting  to these locations challenge preconceived ideas of danger and have brought about some of the most beautiful experiences. Intentionally proposes to confuse documentation with history, recreating segments from own documented events.  We never give ourselves any boundaries or let them interfere with the work. Making art is not the intention at all. All of their efforts are oriented towards giving performances that have never been seen before.

Having received no formal art training, we pursue spontaneous and experimental techniques and methods of construction. The  creative process begins with a single movement  or abstract image conveyed to her film making pattern. Chuma 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, we upend conventional notions of dance and disrupt accepted characteristics of performance. The performances not only stand apart from the genealogy of dance but also resist definition and confound interpretation – endless peripheral borders.

President and founder of CRS Yasuko Kasaki is an internationally beloved spiritual writer, counselor, healer, lecturer and translator from Tokyo, Japan. The founder of CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing), the first and only spiritual center devoted to the teaching and practice of A Course in Miracles (ACIM) in New York City, she is widely recognized as the person most responsible for the spread of A Course in Miracles throughout Japan.

CRS serves as a spiritual and creative laboratory, providing a diverse and international community of artists and healers across disciplines with opportunities to experiment and share their unique inner visions in order to illuminate what is true and universal. Yasuko Kasaki in 2004, CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing) offers spiritual counseling, healing, and mind training and also develops and presents arts and cultural programming. The CRS mission is rooted in the non-dualistic teachings of A Course in Miracles (ACIM), which reminds us that we are limitless spiritual beings and encourages us to remember our true nature by committing to a practice of deep, non-judgmental inquiry.