Having just returned to New York after performing in Venezuela, and still weary from the trip, choreographer, director and dancer Yoshiko Chuma breaks into a wry smile.

"If I had never left Japan and were able to hold my drink, I would probably have become an alcoholic," she says. "I would probably be dead by now."

Based in New York, Chuma, 68, is widely known for her avant-garde work. Since the 1980s, she has been pushing boundaries, creating controversial works that disrupt the fixed concepts and categories of the performing arts and cut deep through the mores of contemporary socio-political life.