Yanira Castro

About the Artist

Yanira Castro is a Puerto Rican artist based in Brooklyn. In 2009, she formed the interdisciplinary collaborative group, a canary torsi, an anagram of her name. a canary torsi's work borrows from dance, performance, theater, and visual art often utilizing in-teractive technology to form hybrid projects. The work focuses on the significance of gathering and watching—the historical, political and social resonances of the act of being present together in performance, investigating the encounter of public bodies: the event and the audience. In the work, Castro negotiates complexities of sources, authorship, and practice with a team of collaborators (including audience) to build the work as a communal act. Castro has received commissions from New York Live Arts, The Invisible Dog Art Center, The Chocolate Factory Theater, Abrons Art Center, Danspace Project, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, touring nationally and internationally. She received a 2009 Bessie Award for "Dark Horse/Black Forest" presented by PS 122 in the lobby restroom of the Gershwin Hotel. The archive for her participatory performance project, The People to Come was featured in the New Museum's exhibit, "Performance Archiving Performance," in 2013.

Her fellowships and residencies include: New York Live Arts Live Feed Artist (2020-2018), Yaddo Fellow (2018), Marble House Project Artist (2018), Gibney's DiP Resident Artist program (2017), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Extended Life Dance Development participant (2017-2015), _IN RESIDENCE Artist at Dancehouse in Melbourne, Australia (2016), BRIClab Artist (2016), Returning Choreographic Fellow at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (2013-14), Vermont Performance Lab Artist (2012), Dance New Amsterdam Artist in Residence (2013), Artist Ne(s)t AIR (2007, Romania), Sugar Salon Fellow (2007), and Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Fellow (2006, Italy). She has been recognized with various awards for her work, including the New York Foundation for the Arts Choreography Fellowship, the New England Foundation for the Arts's National Dance Project, MAP Fund, The Jerome Foundation, New Music USA, Trust for Mutual Under-standing, USArtists International and a NYSCA Theater Commission.

Castro received her BA in theater and dance and literature from Amherst College. In 2007, she received an honorary doctorate in the arts from her alma mater.