Yanira Castro

Yanira Castro

Yanira Castro is a Puerto Rican director/choreographer based in Brooklyn who collaborates with performers and designers on individual projects under the name: a canary torsi. Prior to 2008, Yanira was making work under Yanira Castro + Company. Her performance works integrate movement, installation, music, text, and visual elements such as film and video. She has developed work for a variety of spaces including: the Old American Can Factory, The Gershwin Hotel, the Brooklyn Lyceum (a former bathhouse), and a confessional. Castro’s work has been presented in New York by Dance Theater Workshop, Performance Space 122, The Chocolate Factory, and The Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), among others. Her work has toured nationally and internationally. Her piece, Dark Horse/Black Forest, received a 2009 New York Dance and Performance “BESSIE” Award, and was 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 has been recognized with various fellowships and awards including NEFA’s National Dance Project Touring Award, The Jerome Foundation, The MAP Fund, New York Foundation for the Art’s BUILD, Meet the Composer’s Commissioning Music/USA program, Trust for Mutual Understanding, USArtists International, and Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Fellowship. She was selected artist-in-residence for ArtistNe(s)t, a project developed by the Swiss Cultural Programme by Pro Helvetia and the Swiss Development Cooperation SDC in the George Apostu Cultural Center in Bacau, Romania. Castro received her B.A. in Theater & Dance and Literature from Amherst College.

Media Fellowship Project | May 21 - 28, 2012

The People to Come

The People to Come is a new 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 contributed by the communities surrounding the performance site and the audience attending the performances.

During her residency, Castro and her team of collaborators including creative engineer Sam Lerner will design, test, and refine 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 can respond before coming to the performance, by visiting the website or contribute 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 Residency is made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

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.