“In “Before the Dawn,” Yumiko Yoshioka’s body became a menagerie of strange creatures. A founding member of the all-female Butoh company Ariadone, she appeared in voluminous red robes, her face masked. When her hands emerged from the fabric, they skittered over her body like spiders or pecked at her flesh like birds. Eventually shedding much of her clothing, she made her body both a physical and an abstract object.”
– Claudia La Rocco, “Plumbing the Depths in Vast Inner Landscapes”, The New York Times, 2005
