2012 Lab residency

Yanira Castro – The People To Come

YANIRA CASTRO has been creating site-adaptable dance projects within visual and audio environments since 2000. Her elegantly designed work plays with the relationship between the audience and the performance event, examining questions of intimacy, distance, control, manipulation and ultimately the agency of the audience in the performative environment.

Castro is collaborating with composer Stephan Moore and installation designer Kathy Couch to develop The People to Come, her newest performance work. The People to Come is a participatory, site-adaptable installation where the dance is radically altered each night by the performers, who use material created/contributed by communities surrounding the performance site.  Simple assignments are given on a dedicated website (thepeopletocome.org), and performers adapt their dance to the audiences’ responses that are given before, during and after the performance. Some examples of the assignments are: “Pick a famous portrait and photograph yourself in the pose” or “Describe the public for your work (as a lawyer, teacher, etc.) in a run-on sentence.” The website serves as the archive for all the contributed material and dances, forming a portrait of each performance community.

Through a series of research visits in March, June, July and September, Castro and her collaborators will gather information about the Town House in Marlboro, VT and the community by attending events, conducting interviews, collecting photos, and recording with a group of local musicians. Their work will culminate in a public performance in the Town House itself in September 2012.