Yanira Castro – Dance/USA Artist Fellow

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Image Description: Yanira Castro is a light-skinned Puerto Rican woman. She looks over her right shoulder with her white hair pulled back and wearing black rimmed glasses, her grandmother's gold hoops, and two necklaces made by dancers: a gold chain and a single raw pearl. Photo by Josefina Santos.

Yanira Castro

she/her

Brooklyn, NY | Lenapehoking

Yanira Castro is an interdisciplinary artist born in Borikén (Puerto Rico), living in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn), and working at the intersection of communal practices, performance, installation, and interactive technology. She forms iterative, multimodal projects activated and performed by the public. Co-creating with a team of collaborators under the name, a canary torsi, she investigates choreography as a practice of collective action. Her recent works include a public art project during the U.S. 2024 election (exorcism-liberation.net), a performance manual for reckoning (lastaudience.org); a participatory podcast to rehearse for a collective future (anchor.fm/acanarytorsi); and a multimodal project for exorcising U.S. colonial possession, “I came here to weep.”

Her projects have been recognized with national awards, commissions and residency support. She is the recipient of awards from the Creative Capital Foundation, Herb Alpert Award in the Arts for Dance, The MAP Fund, NYSCA/NYFA Interdisciplinary Artist and Choreography Fellowships, and has received two Bessie Awards for Outstanding Production. She has recently been in residence at The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, MacDowell, Yaddo, and The Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography. Her recent work has been presented and commissioned by The Chocolate Factory Theater, New York Live Arts, Museum Contemporary Art Chicago, Abrons Arts Center, and The Invisible Dog Art Center.

Learn more about Yanira Castro:

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Image Description: Yanira stands on a platform of cinderblocks surrounded by upright fluorescents. She has her eyes closed and is in motion, her hands gripping the legs of her pants up baring her legs. She is lit very strongly and behind her in the distance is the audience amongst a pile of lawn chairs. Photo by Maria Baranova.
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Image Description: An audience stands outside The Chocolate Factory Theater facing a tall garage door on which is a red vinyl sign that reads, "Exorcism = Liberation." The audience is holding up their hands to the night sky. Some have their eyes closed. Photo by Maria Baranova.
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Image Description: Two people are in the midst of frantic movement. One of them is gritting their teeth. In their hands are large sheets of mylar that they are shaking. An audience is seated on the floor around them. Photo by Maria Baranova.
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Image Description: Five audience members stand in a circle holding pieces of paper that have instructions on them. Four of them are facing the inside of the circle and looking down at their paper. The fifth person, holding a mic, is looking out of the circle. Photo by Maria Baranova.

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