Yoshiko Chuma (conceptual artist, choreographer/artistic director of The School of Hard Knocks) has been a firebrand in the post-modern dance scene of New York City since the 1980s, consistently producing thought-provoking work that is neither dance nor theater nor film nor any other pre-determined category. She is an artist on her own journey, a path that has taken her to over 40 “out of the way” countries and collected over 2000 artists, thinkers and collaborators of every genre since establishing her company in New York City in 1980.

Tim Clifford is a visual artist whose sculptures, drawings and paintings address how vernacular objects and images accrue meaning and shape history. His most recent work combines elements of American carnival games with imagery drawn from mourning and funeral settings. Clifford work was seen this past summer in the exhibition Gathering of the Bungalows atWalter’s, Rockaway Beach, NY. Clifford’s public sculpture Monument to a Missing Island was seen in Randall’s Island Park, New York, in 2016 as park of the exhibition FLOW.16. His 2015 solo exhibition Threat Assessment was presented at Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project, New York. Other exhibitions include group shows at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Smack Mellon, Greenwood Cemetery, Socrates Sculpture Park, and High Desert Test Sites 5 in Joshua Tree, California. Clifford participated in the Artist in the Marketplace program of the Bronx Museum of the Arts in 2015, and received an Emerging Artist Fellowship from Socrates Sculpture Park in 2007 and a NYFA fellowship in sculpture in 2001.

Dane Terry is a multi-media artist, writer and composer. Dane was the writer, composer and lead performer of the musical fiction podcast Dreamboy (Night Vale Presents 2018). Works for stage include: Jupiter’s Lifeless Moons (PSNY 2018 – COIL Festival) and Bird In The House (La MaMa 2015, Under The Radar Festival 2016). Dane was the 2016 recipient of the Ethyl Eichelberger Award from PSNY.

Miriam Parker has been Working within the avant-garde jazz community as an artist and collaborator since  birth, she  uses movement, installation, paint, and media to build modular kinetic environments that become extensions of the choreographed body. Through re-organizational practices, Parker refines her understanding of individuality, outside of traditions built from oppressive ethics. Her practice is to find new modes of freedom through multiple narratives as a means to evolve. She does this through collaboration with other artists, musicians, filmmakers, dancers, and meditation practitioners – all equally concerned about social injustice and deeply rooted in experimental performance and interdisciplinary creation.

Ursula Eagly is a dance artist who has been based in New York City for over 20 years. Her works are characterized by a “rabbit-hole logic” (New York Times), and her research focuses on physical experiences that are not conventionally regarded as material for choreography: the autonomic, the psychosocial, the perceptual. Ursula met Yoshiko in 2005 and was a core performer in The School of Hard Knocks’ Page Out of Order series (2006-2011).  www.ursulaeagly.org

Emily Pope is a performing artist, teacher, choreographer, dancer, and video artist. She is an alumna of UNCSA (1991), received their BFA in Performance/Choreography from OSU Dance (Summa Cum Laude 1997), and their MFA in Dance/Choreography from the NYU Tisch School of the Arts (2007). She currently performs in NYC with Tamar Rogoff Performance Projects, Tiffany Mills Dance Company, Yoshiko Chuma and The School of Hard Knocks, and Douglas Dunn + Dancers. They are a recipient of the 2020 Bessie Honoree Award for Outstanding Performance.

Claire Fleury (costumes) creates easygoing yet structural designs, balancing between elegance and wit, funkiness and comfortability, originality and tradition.
The designs are committed to a radically inclusive vision with colors, cuts and patterns not assigned to a single gender, body type, age or season.

The School of Hard Knocks was founded as a company of diverse backgrounds. Its purpose is to create, perform, encourage and sponsor experimental and multi-disciplinary, and multi-media work. The School of Hard Knocks is an ongoing phenomenon—its shape is as diverse as the situations the company performs in—from 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, the 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.