a canary torsi, Court/Garden. Photo by Maria Baranova.
A spectacle in three acts, choreographer Yanira Castro’s Court/Garden takes as its inspiration the imperial ballets of Louis XIV’s court, the spectatorship of the proscenium stage, and the presentation of video feeds. Each act is staged within a specific audience/performer relationship, shifting the experience to ask, Who is the court? Who will be king for a day?
Castro and her teeming band of collaborators…have gone all out here in an elaborate mash-up of Sun King spectacle with modern technology in which audience members are not only part of the mix but the whole point of it.
— dance critic Eva Yaa Asantewaa
Performed by Castro’s group a canary torsi, Court/Garden evokes cultural, social, and political frames of experience with an operatic, spectacle-driven vocabulary reflecting how power functions in contemporary theatrical images from the fashion runway to the creation of cultural icons.
The presentation of Court/Garden was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts.
First Republic Bank is proud to sponsor the ICA’s 2015–16 Performance Season.
Access for Boston’s dance community is supported in part by the Pratt-Hall Fund.
