Wilderness
2010
“Watching, or rather participating, in Wilderness, one can just as easily lose themselves in the piece’s inherent suspense and intimacy as they can reflect on its dense and layered exploration of representation, death, and the unknowable.”
— Andrew Frank, BOMBlog, “A New Language: Yanira Castro”
Wilderness was a dance and sound performance that took place in an elliptical field of black rubber mulch containing audience, piano, crew. The piece contemplated wilderness as an unfamiliar environment that brings action into high relief. The audience was implicated in the performance ecosystem as their behavior influenced the sound and movement. Because of the specificity of visual information and proximity to the action, the dance brought the audience and the performers into an acute shared attentiveness.
Wilderness had its world premiere at EMPAC’s Filament Festival in Troy, NY. It premiered in New York at The Invisible Dog Art Center, presented and commissioned by Dance Theater Workshop.
Team
Director, Choreographer: Yanira Castro
Performers, Co-choreographers: Luke Miller, Peter Schmitz (soloist), Pamela Vail, Darrin Wright, Kimberly Young
Pianist: Michael Dauphinais
Composer: Stephan Moore
Installation, Lighting Designer: Roderick Murray
Costume Designer: Albert Sakhai
Production Manager: William Schaffner
Works-in-Progress
Movement Research at Judson Church, New York, NY, May 24, 2010
Presentations
Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media & Perf Arts Center (EMPAC), Troy, NY, Oct 1–3, 2010 (World Premiere)
Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN, Oct 20–21, 2010
Dance Theater Workshop & The Invisible Dog, Brooklyn, NY, October 27– November 7, 2010 (NY Premiere)
Roschel Performing Arts Center at Franklin & Marshall College in PA, March 25–26, 2011
Press
Andrew Frank for BOMBlog, “A New Language: Yanira Castro”
Maura Donohue for Culturebot, “Five Questions for Yanira Castro”
Funding
Wilderness was commissioned by Dance Theater Workshop’s Commissioning and Creative Residency Program and by the American Music Center Live Music for Dance Program. Wilderness was funded, in part, by The Jerome Foundation, the Composer Assistance Program of the American Music Center, Meet the Composer’s MetLife Creative Connections Program, and through an artist residency and production support from Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY. Wilderness was also supported with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.
The tours of Wilderness were made possible by a touring grant from the National Dance Project, a program of the New England Foundation for the Arts.
