Video
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
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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
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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
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“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
CAST, STAGE, AUTHOR is a trilogy of works that premiered for three weeks in September 2017 at three commissioning NYC venues: The Chocolate Factory, Abrons Art Center and The Invisible Dog Art Center. The project begins with a set of audio and video recordings with 15 NYC performers about the act of performing, the act of casting, and how imperfectly a cast might represent our public. These recordings form the material for three works that examine the dynamics and politics in three elements of performance: the cast, spectacle, and authorship.
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.
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.
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