a canary torsi Recap: 2012

[Yanira Castro]

Marlon asked me to share this with the Dance-Tech community. It is a canary torsi's year end newsletter recapping the group's work in 2012:

2012 was an intensely creative and rewarding year for a canary torsi. We have so much to share, we thought we would present the highlights in a visual and fun recap.

We kicked it off in January with the production of the dance video, Heather O, at Kirby Theater at Amherst College (my alma mater) performed by Kimberly Young and designed with Kathy Couch + Stephan Moore.

As if one project in January were not enough, we presented the lab performances of Five Performers Demonstrate a Field as part of a five-week Floating Points Residency at the pioneering experimental performance center, ISSUE Project Room, with composer Ben Bernstein, installation designer Charles Houghton, performers Amity Jones and Marina Libel, and musicians Anna Garcia and Peter Lanctot.

 

In March, we had our first of several residencies with our primary partner--the innovative Vermont Performance Lab--on the development of our newest participatory installation project, The People to Come. We attended Town Meeting at Marlboro's historic Town House, where the preview of the piece would be performed. In July, I returned to work with local artist and photographer, Jess Weitz, to launch the website for the project, thepeopletocome.org, by taking over 50 portraits during Marlboro's Summer Sale. These became the first audience submissions uploaded to the site.

 

In May, we had our Media Fellowship Residency at the national choreographic center, Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography. Web Director Sam Lerner, designer Kathy Couch and I worked with three focus groups to develop the accompanying website for The People to Come: thepeopletocome.org. We were joined by performer Luke Miller who performed the first work-in-progress using audience-created submissions to create a dance in front of the audience.

 

 July was a flurry of activity. In addition to my visit to Vermont to work with photographer Jess Weitz, we presented the sold-out remount of 2011's highly successful, Paradis, for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden presented by New York Live Arts. It was met with critical and audience acclaim:

"A dance evolves within me over time. What isn’t memorable eventually slips away, while other moments may become more vivid. An entire scene can be condensed into a single image. I’ve always felt this with performance, but never have I experienced this evolution so intensely, as I did after seeing Paradis by Yanira Castro | a canary torsi."

– Christine Shan Shan Hou, Idiom

 

We ended the month with a special one-night only event, Invisible Dog Interior, Heather O, at The Invisible Dog Art Center, performed by Kimberly Young and Peter Schmitz with lighting and environment by Kathy Couch and sound by Stephan Moore. 

 

In a year that has been so full, the highlight was the creation and premiere of our newest participatory performance installation, The People to Come. With an installation by Couch, sound by Moore and five incredible performers: Simon Courchel, Luke Miller, Peter Musante, Peter Schmitz and Darrin Wright, People is my next step in a line of questioning: What is the divide between spectator and participant? People is a work made with and in front of the audience. It was built with the support of four major residency centers: Vermont Performance Lab; the venerable 40-year institution, The Yard; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Swing Space program; and Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC). The piece premiered at Granoff Center for the Creative Arts thanks to Brown University's Creative Arts Council. Check out www.thepeopletocome.org and see over 400 submissions from audiences we visited in Providence, RI; Marlboro, VT; Tallahassee, FL and Martha’s Vineyard, MA. None of these presentations would have been possible without the amazing support of an Expeditions grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts.

 

2013 holds even more in store. We are touring People to Space Gallery in Portland, ME and presenting the New York premiere at the The Invisible Dog (June 22-29). We have been honored with a multi-year (!!) commitment from MANCC, and with a multi-year residency from Dance New Amsterdam to start developing our next work, Court/Garden, with another amazing cast: Simon Courchel, Luke Miller, Stuart Singer, Pamela Vail and Darrin Wright.

 

As 2012 draws to a close, we at a canary torsi wish to thank everyone who contributed so much to our work this year. Whether you came to a show, gave us a portrait, shared the stage with a performer or contributed a sound score -- you were part of the impact.