|
YANIRA CASTROAUTHOR
Bodies In Motion, 2020 Take class with Yanira via @freeskewl Remote Broadcast At the beginning there was a lot to organize. There were schedules to map out, a family work-out regimen to devise, a “temporary” classroom to set up, grocery runs for ourselves and others to suit up and plan for like we were the cast of The Walking Deaddoing a run for supplies: get in and out as fast as possible, don’t touch anything. At the start, I longed for stillness. So much so that I wrote it on the wall above my desk: I desire stillness.
Space for grieving. Space for observing. Writing those three lines is the most quiet I have been able to achieve.
Sheltering-in-place hasn’t been an artist residency, for me, like some joked on my social media feed. Put it on your resumes! Covid-19 Residency, Mar 2019 - ??? 20??. At the beginning, a week in…. Anna Maynard contacted me as my son and I were learning how to navigate Zoom. She and her collaborators were starting a school online, @freeskewl. They had devised it in a day or two it seemed to me. Out of thin air… poof!….there was a roster of teachers. Would I teach something? I admired the ingenuity and the immediacy: “We need this…. abracadabra… magic!” But I also know how much labor it takes to make things appear from nothing and how much that labor goes under resourced even while deeply valued. I took a week to say “yes”—to allow myself to devote the labor to the cause and to devise something that I thought might be worth the while in a time so uncertain. |
I developed #promptsforplayandlightness as the thing I longed for, a meditative time to devise for yourself. Not a time to follow instruction. But rather a time where you could be in the space you are in every day and observe it, inhabit it, let it feed your imagination. The mantra for the class, “It will be simple because anything else is unnecessary.” It was a response to the time and a way to attend.
Each class, after looking at and talking about other artists’ scores, would settle down into a single prompt for creating a score for 20 minutes. During those 20 minutes, I would devise an environment for zoom that you could ignore or come in/out of or immerse yourself in.
Each class, after looking at and talking about other artists’ scores, would settle down into a single prompt for creating a score for 20 minutes. During those 20 minutes, I would devise an environment for zoom that you could ignore or come in/out of or immerse yourself in.
Prompt:
Locate a series of points in your room.
Think dimensionally.
Organize these locations as a drawing.
Be attentive to the detail between locations and the location themselves.
Are there connectors?
Locate a series of points in your room.
Think dimensionally.
Organize these locations as a drawing.
Be attentive to the detail between locations and the location themselves.
Are there connectors?
What delighted me about the scores that arose from these prompts was the empathy that people would invest in their objects and their spaces. The ways in which they would worry for their couch, pity their wastebasket, tend to their plants.
I did four classes before I had to leave for a project much too large to speak about here but suffice to say that it is a political project that concerns itself with the future of the dance field and how to ensure and devise and work towards an equitable future. It is daunting. Sheltering-in-place has made me long for stillness but it has demanded action. Again: devotion, labor, cause, under resourced, deeply valued. This is a cycle that needs to change.
I am grateful for that class and those humans I met with weekly for a month to unburden ourselves for a short period of time and with a prompt create something in the uncertain unknown.
You can see the four prompts and try them yourself at freeskewl/movement crossing’s website: https://www.movementcrossings.com/post/promptsforplayandlightness. The website itself is another example of labor, devotion, the creation of resources. Thank you, Tori.
Attend to yourself, attend to others, attend to your space and to the world beyond that space that needs the justice we ALL need to survive.
With love from Brooklyn in Lenapehoking.
YANIRA CASTRO
Yanira Castro is a Puerto Rican interdisciplinary artist living in NYC. Since 2009, she has made performances, videos, and installations with a team of collaborators under the moniker, a canary torsi. a canary torsi's practice has involved creating systems, scores, and software programs that ensure that elements of performance (choreography, text, music, environment) unfold in real time in response to the presence/participation of the audience, often building the work in real time as a communal act. The work has been presented extensively in NYC and has toured nationally. Castro has received a Bessie Award for Outstanding Production and a NYFA Choreography Fellowship as well as various commissions, residencies and project grant awards. Castro received her B.A. in Theater & Dance and Literature from Amherst College. Her mentors include Wendy Woodson, Suzanne Dougan, Peter Lobdell, Jim Coleman, Terese Freedman and Peter Schmitz.
WEBSITE: www.acanarytorsi.org
INSTAGRAM: @aCanaryTorsi
Take class with Yanira via @freeskewl
FACEBOOK: @acanarytorsi and @Yaniracastro
I did four classes before I had to leave for a project much too large to speak about here but suffice to say that it is a political project that concerns itself with the future of the dance field and how to ensure and devise and work towards an equitable future. It is daunting. Sheltering-in-place has made me long for stillness but it has demanded action. Again: devotion, labor, cause, under resourced, deeply valued. This is a cycle that needs to change.
I am grateful for that class and those humans I met with weekly for a month to unburden ourselves for a short period of time and with a prompt create something in the uncertain unknown.
You can see the four prompts and try them yourself at freeskewl/movement crossing’s website: https://www.movementcrossings.com/post/promptsforplayandlightness. The website itself is another example of labor, devotion, the creation of resources. Thank you, Tori.
Attend to yourself, attend to others, attend to your space and to the world beyond that space that needs the justice we ALL need to survive.
With love from Brooklyn in Lenapehoking.
YANIRA CASTRO
Yanira Castro is a Puerto Rican interdisciplinary artist living in NYC. Since 2009, she has made performances, videos, and installations with a team of collaborators under the moniker, a canary torsi. a canary torsi's practice has involved creating systems, scores, and software programs that ensure that elements of performance (choreography, text, music, environment) unfold in real time in response to the presence/participation of the audience, often building the work in real time as a communal act. The work has been presented extensively in NYC and has toured nationally. Castro has received a Bessie Award for Outstanding Production and a NYFA Choreography Fellowship as well as various commissions, residencies and project grant awards. Castro received her B.A. in Theater & Dance and Literature from Amherst College. Her mentors include Wendy Woodson, Suzanne Dougan, Peter Lobdell, Jim Coleman, Terese Freedman and Peter Schmitz.
WEBSITE: www.acanarytorsi.org
INSTAGRAM: @aCanaryTorsi
Take class with Yanira via @freeskewl
FACEBOOK: @acanarytorsi and @Yaniracastro
^ Last Audience photos by Simon Courchel
v Court/Garden photos by Maria Baranova
v Court/Garden photos by Maria Baranova
