Yanira Castro
Yanira Castro
Brooklyn, NY
a canary torsi
Director | Choreographer
Puerto-Rican born and Brooklyn-based director/choreographer Yanira Castro collaborates with a core group of performers and designers on individual projects under the name, a canary torsi. She and her collaborators work in a multiplicity of spaces: from warehouses, restrooms, and gardens to the stage, embedding dances within visual and audio installations where the audience’s presence dramatically impacts the work.
Her work has been presented in New York by New York Live Arts/Dance Theater Workshop, Performance Space 122, ISSUE Project Room, The Invisible Dog Art Center, The Chocolate Factory, The Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), and HERE Arts Center, among others, and has toured nationally and internationally.
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 from The New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project and Expeditions programs, 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 2013/14 and 2007 Choreography Fellow and 2012 Media Fellow at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, a 2013/14 Artist-in-Residence at Dance New Amsterdam, 2012 Vermont Performance Lab Artist, a 2012 and 2010 LMCC Swing Space Artist-in-Residence, a 2008/2009 ARC Artist, a 2007 Artist Ne(s)t Artist-in-Residence in Bacau, Romania, 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.