Puerto Rican interdisciplinary artist Yanira Castro (a canary torsi) is collaborating with four teens from Girl Scout Troop 6000, a girl scout program specially designed to serve girls in the New York City Shelter system, on a tea ritual and oral history project on land, embodiment, and self-determination. Together, Castro and the teens will develop a care ceremony to enact the ingestion of land as an intimate ritual for two, a visitor and a teen.
On Thursday, July 14, during the day, visitors can RSVP to take part in this one-to-one experience. The day culminates with a free, vegan, earthy meal of sancocho, a dish made of tubers indigenous to Puerto Rico, and prepared by Castro. The public is invited to this meal to share stories about the complexity of dirt, origins and belonging.
Tierra, part of a larger work premiering in 2023, I came here to weep, is made possible by a NYSCA Individual Artists’ Interdisciplinary Artist Commission made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.
The Tea Ritual
Thursday, July 14
RSVP
The Meal
Thursday, July 14
7pm
RSVP
Troop 6000TM is a Girl Scout program specially designed to serve girls in the New York City Shelter System. Each week, Troop 6000 meets in shelters across the city. Troop meetings are facilitated by trained troop leaders – women also living in the shelter system paired with community-based volunteers – and give girls the opportunity to make new friends, earn badges, and see themselves as leaders in their communities.
About a canary torsi
Yanira Castro is a Puerto Rican born interdisciplinary artist living in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn, NY). Since 2009, she has made participatory performances and interactive installations with a team of collaborators under the moniker, a canary torsi. Her work is rooted in communal construction as a practice of radical democracy and invites the public into co-creation. Castro is the recipient of the 2022 Herb Alpert Award for Dance and has received two Bessie Awards for Outstanding Production and a NYFA Choreography Fellowship as well as various commissions, residencies and national project grant awards. She is one of the co-authors of “Creating New Futures’ Phase 1: Working Guidelines for Ethics & Equity in Presenting Dance & Performance,” and “Phase 2: Notes on Equitable Funding from Arts Workers.” Both are collectively-written documents drafted as calls-to-action to address deep-rooted inequities in the performance field.
Website: www.acanarytorsi.org
Instagram: @acanarytorsi
Facebook: @yaniracastro
Twitter: @acanarytorsi
Vimeo: www.vimeo.com/acanarytorsi