At MANCC, Castro explored an idea she calls innocent space through developing an audience environment for a new dance installation entitled Center of Sleep. Inspired by the psychological and biological connections between sleep, gestation and metamorphosis, the piece seeks 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 are engaged in research around gestation and puberty to further inform the work. Collaborators included composer Stephan Moore and dancers Peggy Cheng, Luke Miller, Heather Olson and Joseph Poulsen.
Yanira's research for Center of Sleep was deepened at MANCC through several interactions with the FSU faculty symposium participants, which included visits to their labs and studios for observation and explanation of the their experiments and work, as well as the symposium event itself. The informal showings allowed Yanira to see how audience interacts with the dance environment she was creating, as well as how to possibly prompt the audience to maneuver themselves without instruction while they view the work. In an effort to create an environment in Center of Sleep where highly localized and manipulated sounds are created in real space which radiate in all directions, Stephan Moore joined in the process with his custom-built hemispherical speakers, ready to experiment. He and Yanira were able to develop a vocabulary of sound events in response to the emotional world of the piece and the live audience response. Preluding the mentioned entrypoints was the opportunity to study adolescent movement, behavior and emotional responses during the "Young Dancers' Choreographic Workshop" that Yanira led. The observations garnered from that experience generated movement ideas that she and her dancers further researched and developed throughout the residency.
Center of Sleep will premiere at Dance Theater Workshop in Fall 2008.
"MANCC is a lab, a place of deep investigation -- full of all the discoveries, pitfalls and challenges that entails. It is the center of what we do as artists and what keeps the work true to itself and potentially transformative." --YC
COMMUNITY OUTCOMES
FSU dance students, faculty and staff, members of other FSU departments and the Tallahassee community, experienced Yanira’s research through open rehearsals, dance forum, informal showings, and research symposium.
A research symposium was organized to bring together a diverse group of experts for a dialogue about their individual research on gestation and metamorphoses, two themes that Yanira was researching for her new work Center of Sleep. The symposium included research presentations and dialogue from: Yanira Castro, Dr. Curtis Altmann, FSU Assistant Professor in the College of Medicine, Dr. Jamila Horabin, FSU Associate Professor in the College of Medicine, Joelle Dietrick, FSU Assistant Professor in the Visual Art Department, and Terri Lindbloom, FSU Associate Professor in the Visual Art Department. The symposium encouraged rich dialogue with those in attendance (including visual artists, scientists, writers, dancers) about the similarities and importance of research, no matter the field.
Young dancers from Tallahassee and various Florida cities benefited from a choreographic workshop, for some their first ever choreographic experience, with Yanira during the annual FSU Suzanne Farrell Young Dancer's Workshop.
BIOGRAPHY
Puerto-Rican born choreographer Yanira Castro has collaborated with a core group of performers and designers on individual projects since arriving in New York in 1994. In her work, she integrates different media including movement, music, text and visual elements such as film, video and installation to develop multi-layered works that encourage a complexity and openness of interpretation while being precise in form and structure. In 1997, she formed Yanira Castro + Company.
For the past six years, Yanira has been concentrating on designing site-based installations for performances at different venues and premiering work in untraditional spaces. By creating a specific physical environment for a piece that takes into account its emotional landscape, the unique architecture of a space, and the relationship of the audience to the performers, a viewing experience is created for the piece that is active and participatory. The group’s last project, Beacon (2005) was presented by DTW and the Brooklyn Lyceum, a 4,000 sq ft former public bathhouse, and contained the audience in four Plexiglas witness boxes from which they experienced the piece. Cartography (2002) was presented by XØ Projects Inc and was comprised of four installations set throughout the Old American Can Factory, an industrial and art complex of six buildings in Brooklyn. The Company’s work has been presented in a variety of venues in New York, including Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, Movement Research at the Judson Church, HERE Arts Center, Tribeca Performing Arts Center, and Dixon Place, as well as Dance Place in Washington, DC.
Yanira received her B.A. in Theater & Dance and Literature from Amherst College. She has been recognized with awards from the New York Foundation for the Art’s Building Up Infrastructure Levels for Dance (BUILD), The Multi-Arts Production Fund, Meet the Composer’s Commissioning Music/USA program, and the Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Foundation. She has also received a Bessie Schönberg/First Light Commission from DTW with funds from the Jerome Foundation, a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center in Italy, and a Sugar Salon residency, a program of Williamsburg Art neXus (WAX) in partnership with the Dance Department of Barnard College of Columbia University.
Upcoming projects include a new site-based dance installation for the Chocolate Factory in Long Island City, Queens, (fetus)twin, October 19-21, 2006.
COLLABORATORS
Peggy H. Cheng, dancer
Luke Miller, dancer
Heather Olsen, dancer
Joseph Poulsen, dancer
Stephan Moore, Composer
Peggy H. Cheng (dancer) has been performing and creating work with independent choreographers and directors since 1993. She is a founding member of Maura Donohue/In Mixed Company and the Development Manager at Danspace Project. She has previously worked with Yanira Castro in The First of All Hacks, a play commissioned by Peculiar Works Project, and a work-in-progress version of Beacon.
Luke Miller (dancer) originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, studied at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. He has performed in the work of Eun Me Ahn, Ivy Baldwin, Stanley Love, Julie Atlas Muz, Fiona Marcotty, Neta Pulvermacher, Katie Workum and currently in the companies of Yanira Castro, Neil Greenberg and Susan Marshall. In the play Madama Fortuna, written and directed by Antonio Rodriguez and presented by Dixon Place at Chasama, Luke portrayed the role of Bunny Teddy and choreographed the production. He also co-directed the play The Pet Goat with writer Brian Boyles at the Williamsburg Art neXus (WAX) during the 2004 Republican National Convention. Luke can also sometimes be seen performing on the burlesque stage with Kate Valentine or Tigger, the reigning Mr. Exotic World.
Heather Olson (dancer) is from Chicago and has been working with Yanira Castro + Company since February of 2000. In addition to her work with Yanira, she has been a member of Tere O’Connor Dance since 1997 and has also had the pleasure of working with Jennifer Allen, Ivy Baldwin, Ashley Smith (Red Dive), Donna Uchizono, and Levi Gonzales. Heather received her BFA in Dance from North Carolina School of the Arts. Her own work has been presented in a variety of New York City venues, including Danspace Project’s Food for Thought series and Galapagos Art Space.
Joseph Poulson (dancer) is a native of Philadelphia and a graduate from the University of Iowa. He has been active performing, teaching and choreographing since his arrival to NYC in 1999. He has worked with Terry Creach Co., David Dorfman Dance, Jeanine Durning, Susan Marshall & Company, the Mark Morris Dance Group, and Bill Young and Dancers, among others. Joe is pleased to join Yanira Castro + Company for their new work.
Stephan Moore (composer) is a composer, audio artist, and sound designer living in Brooklyn. He has graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Western Michigan University, and Interlochen Arts Academy. His creative work centers around the collection and use of real-world sound, the creation and perception of sonic environments, and technological manifestations of improvisation and interactivity. Recent performances and installation artworks make use of a sixteen-channel array of his hand-built hemispherical speakers. He performs regularly as half of the electronic duo Evidence and with an assortment of musicians, live-video artists, and dancers. He has created custom music software for a number of composers and artists, and has taught courses in sound art and electronic music at Maryland Institute College of Art, Peabody Conservatory, Massachusetts College of Art, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Simon’s Rock College of Bard. He is currently the Sound Supervisor of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
