Yanira Castro

Puerto-Rican born and Brooklyn-based choreographer Yanira Castro collaborates with a core group of performers and designers on individual projects under the name, a canary torsi. Her work has been presented in New York by Dance Theater Workshop, Performance Space 122, ISSUE Project Room, The Invisible Dog Art Center, The Chocolate Factory, The Experimental Media & Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), and HERE Arts Center, among others. Her work has often incorporated untraditional spaces including public bathrooms, warehouses, former bathhouses, and gardens. Internationally, her dance installation Dark Horse/Black Forest has been presented in the public bathrooms of the George Bacovia Theater in Bacau, Romania; the Daile Theatre in Riga, Latvia and the Tanzhaus in Düsseldorf, Germany for the International Tanzmesse. 

Castro and the team of Dark Horse/Black Forest won a 2009 NY Dance & Performance (aka Bessie) Award for the performance of that project at The Gershwin Hotel. She has received several commissions and awards for her work, including National Dance Project’s Touring Award, The MAP Fund, The Jerome Foundation, NYFA’s BUILD, Meet the Composer’s Commissioning Music/USA program, NYSCA, New Music USA’s Live Music for Dance, Trust for Mutual Understanding, and USArtists International. She is a 2012 Vermont Performance Lab Artist, a 2012 and 2010 LMCC Swing Space Artist-in-Residence, a 2008/2009 ARC Artist, a 2007 Artist-in-Residence at the George Apostu Cultural Center in Romania with Artist Ne(s)t, a 2007 Sugar Salon Artist, and a 2006 Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellow. Castro received her B.A. in Theater & Dance and Literature from Amherst College.

Media Fellowship Project | May 21 - 27, 2012

The People to Come

The People to Come is a new participatory performance installation conceived and directed by Castro in collaboration with Sound Installation Artist Stephan Moore, Lighting and Installation Designer Kathy Couch, and five male dancers. The work initiates from a solo choreographed by Castro, which is radically altered each night by the performers from material created by the communities surrounding the performance site and the audience attending the performances.

During her residency, Castro and her team of collaborators including Web Programmer Sam Lerner designed, tested, and refined the accompanying interactive website. The website hosts a series of questions or “proposals” that request photographs, drawings, videos, and/or text as a response for entry into the performance. Audience members are able to respond before coming to the performance by visiting the website or contributing live during the performance. Ultimately, the site will serve as the archival repository for material contributed to the project by audience and community members, musical scores, and dances created in response to the material.

The Media Fellowship Project is made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

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Collaborators in Residence: Luke Miller [performer], Kathy Couch [designer], Sam Lerner [web programmer] Slideshow Photos by Chris Cameron

Choreographic Fellow | February 7 – 25, 2007

Center of Sleep

Castro explored an idea she called innocent space through developing an audience environment for this dance installation . Inspired by the psychological and biological connections between sleep, gestation and metamorphosis, the piece sought to explore the process of radical transformation with sleep as an enclosed neurological activity that resembles, in state, a cocoon, and adolescence as a period of metamorphosis.  Castro worked with the community in the development of the audience experience for Center of Sleep, attempting a space without predictable boundaries between audience and performer. Castro also facilitated a roundtable with FSU professors who were engaged in research around gestation and puberty to further inform the work.    

During her residency Castro hosted a symposium and showing with FSU Professors Dr. Curtis Altman, Joelle Dietrick, Dr. Jamila Horabin and Terri Lindbloom. 

Center of Sleep premiered February 27 - March 1, 2008 at Dance Theater Workshop.

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Collaborators in Residence: Stephan Moore [composer], Peggy Cheng, Luke Miller, Heather Olson, Joseph Poulson [dancers]

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