Video
I came here to weep
I came here to weep
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Sat, Jan 13, 2024 |
Annual Elsie Management Showcase I came here to weep |
Ny City Center Studio 5, New York City, NY |
Please check back soon for newly announced tour dates!
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Press
“The curator Tara Aisha Willis describes the booklet format as ‘somewhere between an instruction manual and a prayer book.’”
– , The New York Times
full article (PDF)
“Rollercoasters have nothing on this.“
– Mary Hodges, The Brooklyn Rail
full article (PDF)
“Castro here challenges all your assumptions about performance, and forces you to wake up. Gamble on it.”
– Elizabeth Zimmer, Metro
full article (PDF)
More Press Quotes
“Castro’s ‘Paradis’ feels like it grew organically out of the ground (or descended from the heavens), like the lovely trees and flowers that cover the garden’s fifty-two lush acres. No mere spectacle, the piece invites the viewer to become part of a magical experience, a fitting tribute to the beauty of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the endless imagination of Castro and her company.”
– This Week in New York
“Throughout [Court/Garden], Castro maintains an interesting tension… between seductive beauty and those things that make you seriously question what you find beautiful, why you do and who the hell you think you are to judge.“
– Eva Yaa Asantewaa, Infinite Body
full article (PDF)
“[Yanira Castro and her company] shatter the mannerisms and ethos of the Baroque period and reassemble these gilded fragments to forge something contemporary yet wholly reminiscent in ‘Court/Garden’.”
– Erin Bomboy, Dance Enthusiast
full article (PDF)
“…like a poem come to life.”
– Michelle Vellucci, Flavorwire
full article (PDF)
“Forget the safety of distance; this is the palpable sensation of art – up-close and personal.“
– Deborah Gibroff, Encore Magazine
full article (PDF)
“Choreographer Castro’s upcoming duet takes voyeurism to a precipice.”
– Lori Ortiz, Gay City News
full article (PDF)
“Castro’s work is intellectual. Her movement is quirky; remarkably polished performances propel her unexpected stutters and awkward positions…Castro’s smart, kooky shenanigans captivate…”
– Chris Dohse, The Village Voice
“Yanira Castro has found an individual voice.”
– Jennifer Dunning, The New York Times
Enacted specifically and uniquely with and by each audience, Last Audience is a live or virtual laboratory for the communal work of conjuring. Comprised of a set of unique scores, the piece grapples with agency and manipulation, negotiating the individual and the collective inside a theatrical context. Drawing on language and themes from requiems and Greek classical tragedy on judgement and democratic formation, Last Audience moves inside the unstable space between the perfunctory and the transformative.
Last Audience trailer
a canary torsi | Yanira Castro, Last Audience/COMMUNE
- This virtual showcase includes footage accompanied by a conversation between interdisciplinary Artist Yanira Castro & Christopher Nunez, Collaborating Artist and Accessibility Consultant
Statement from the artist, August, 2023:
“I came here to weep” is a project two-years in the making and has been deeply transformational. “weep” took much of what I learned with my last project, Last Audience, and propelled it into a direct conversation with the american public on territorial possession. That conversation at The Chocolate Factory season (June 4-11, 2023) was multi-layered, multi-experiential and interactive on many levels. I am continuing to develop “I came here to weep” as an iterative, multimodal platform that investigates the complex relations of citizenship vis-à-vis Borikén (Puerto Rico) and the United States.
At The Chocolate Factory, we developed the first iteration of this project. It delved into The Treaty of Paris 1898 via which Spain ceded its colonies and the US took possession of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. With the support of Creative Capital, I will be continuing this project and researching The Foraker Act of 1900 that designated Puerto Rico as an “unorganized territory” of the US and how the US government was engaged
in the “legal” delineation of citizenship in the wake of the Reconstruction Era. In other words: american history.
– Yanira Castro
a canary torsi creates site-adaptable dance projects within visual and audio environments. Established in 2009 by New York director/choreographer Yanira Castro, a canary torsi invites audiences to engage in scenarios that are anchored around live performance and extend into other media and online platforms. These multidisciplinary arts collaborations incorporate unconventional sites and transform traditional venues. Ranging from formalist movement and immersive audio installations to fictional Twitter feeds and photographic narratives, Castro’s collaborations plunder behavior, gesture, text and sound from a multitude of source: fiction, film, photography to engage participants in an immediate, personal encounter with the work.
Yanira Castro is a Puerto-Rican born and Brooklyn-based director/choreographer. In 2009, she formed a canary torsi, a core group of performers and designers developing performance scenarios within visual and audio environments where the audience’s presence dramatically impacts the work. She has created nine evening-length works, receiving a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award in 2009 for Dark Horse/Black Forest presented by Performance Space 122 in the lobby restroom of The Gershwin Hotel. The archive for a participatory multi-media performance installation, The People to Come (thepeopletocome.org), was featured in The New Museum’s exhibit, “Performance Archiving Performance,” in 2013. Castro’s work has been presented by Danspace Project, New York Live Arts/Dance Theater Workshop, The Invisible Dog Art Center, ISSUE Project Room, The Chocolate Factory, The BEAT Festival and The Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), among others, and has toured nationally and internationally. She is currently a participant in the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Extended Life program. Other fellowships and Artist-in-Residency programs include: Returning Choreographic Fellow at Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, Vermont Performance Lab Artist, Artist Ne(s)t (Romania), and Rockefeller Foundation (Bellagio, Italy). She has been recognized with various awards for her work, including from The New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, The MAP Fund, The Jerome Foundation, New Music USA, Trust for Mutual Understanding, and USArtists International. Castro received her B.A. in Theater & Dance and Literature from Amherst College.
