Yanira Castro’s work is rooted in communal construction as a rehearsal for radical democracy. She is an interdisciplinary artist born in Borikén (Puerto Rico) and lives in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn). Castro develops performance scores and scenarios where the work unfolds in real time in response to the presence and participation of the audience. Co-creating with her collaborators and the public under the name a canary torsi, she investigates choreography as a practice of collective embodiment, grappling with agency and communal action as a body politic. The process of gathering, witnessing, and decision-making is where performance and civics merge and, for her, is the critical, challenging, and transformational work of performance. She is the recipient of a 2022 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts for Dance, a 2024 NYSCA/NYFA Interdisciplinary Artist Fellowship and has received two Bessie Awards for Outstanding Production. She has recently been in residence at MacDowell, Yaddo, and The Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography. She developed Last Audience: a performance manual, a publication with the MCA Chicago during the pandemic for audiences to perform at home, and Last Audience: a performance podcast, a three-part space opera grounded in Borikén. During the 2024 presidential election, she is developing a public art project through collective citywide experiences in New York City, Chicago, and Western Massachusetts, titled Exorcism = Liberation. The project utilizes familiar forms of political media campaigns to immerse the public in sonic experiences, calling us to grieve, remember, and liberate.