Yanira Castro & Company (ASV)
DARK HORSE / BLACK FOREST (40‘)




Photo: Yanira Castro


Sunday, June 8 / Daile Theatre
Monday, June 9 / Daile Theatre


Direction & Choreography: Yanira Castro
Dance: Heather Olson & Joseph Poulson
Sound: Stephan Moore
Costumes: Suzanne Dougan
Lighting: Kathy Couch


Dark Horse/Black Forest is a site-based work.
It is an intensely performed love story presented in the
most intimate space: a bathroom. The audience is privy to
an emotional and private exchange between a man and a woman
that evolves into a formal, sensual dance… pristine and stark.
Set in individual private bathrooms, public bathrooms or an
immersive installation designed by C. Merritt Houghton for theaters
or galleries, the dance is performed for small intimate audiences.

Dark Horse/Black Forest expands Yanira Castro + Company’s
exploration of audience environments: how an observer and a performer
connect to the work, how they participate, how a space influences, and how
the performance addresses this meeting place. The performers and audience
inhabit the bathroom or installation together. There are no theatrical divisions,
allowing the audience close proximity to the action. The performers’ emotional
interactions are palpable and evolving right next to the audience throughout the
performance. The experience is not one of distance, of an image framed, but
of action and event occurring unpredictably beside and around you.

The sound score by composer and musician Stephan Moore plays out of
a portable cassette player provided by the Company and manipulated by the
performers. The costumes by costume designer Suzanne Dougan are inspired
by Romanian/Eastern European dress--particularly that of rural communities--
where the piece was originally developed.

Dark Horse/Black Forest is 40 minutes long and can be presented in any
public or private bathroom or an installation created for a theater or gallery.
The size of the audience depends entirely on the size of the bathroom or installation
and can be performed multiple times in an evening.


Yanira Castro + Company
a New York City based ensemble of dancers and designers that fuses
experiments in movement with original music and visual elements such as
video and installations to create vivid, contemporary performances.
The Company develops environments for each piece at individual sites
and theaters, constructing scenarios for our audiences that transform and
engage their experience of the work. Ranging from stark, minimalist movement
pieces to multimedia projects, the work plunders behaviors, gestures, and images
to evoke emotional landscapes. From two dancers moving in strict unison within
an all-white room glowing in fluorescent light, to the performer leaping in a field
of translucent, plastic sheets, each performance creates its own distinctive world. Puerto-Rican born choreographer Yanira Castro has been based in New York City
since 1994. her work has been presented in a variety of venues in New York, including
Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, Movement research at the Judson Church,
HERE Arts Center, Tribeca Performing Arts Center, and Dixon Place.
The Company has been presented nationally in Pennsylvania, Washington DC,
San Juan, Massachusetts; and internationally at the Festival Off d’Avignon in France
and at the George Bacovia Theater in Bacau, Romania.