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Rebecca Davis has a long relationship with material. Her dancers have worn shoes wrapped in newspaper, leaving smudges of black ink on white paper. They’ve sported unraveling sweaters, the trailing yarn making a sculptural design. She’s covered walls of a theater in security envelopes from floor to ceiling. In the final hands count beginning sounds, Davis moves on to a new source. The body itself is now her canvas, her material.

I have followed the work of Yanira Castro/a canary torsi ever since 2013, when I participated in early versions of “The People to Come,” a work that drew me in as I had never been drawn into a performance before. The piece took the audience and asked them to incorporate parts of their own stories into the dance,. This wasn’t just an immersive performance; we were being asked to co-create it. I was transfixed. In every a canary torsi piece, especially the magnificent “Court/Garden,” Castro has continued to redefine what it means to be part of a performance, for everyone from performer to audience. And from the audience, I never felt so essential to the creative process.

Yanira Castro is a structural obsessive. She is an art scientist. She sees the rules and patterns lurking just beneath the surface of things. The stuff that’s easier not to see. Her company—a canary torsi—is an anagram of her name. This should tell you almost everything you need to know: chaos staring at itself in the mirror, finding order.

On July 20, 2017 we bought a building after being in contract for over two years after more than 10 years of studies, drawings, failed ‘real estate marriages’ with potential partners. We, at The Chocolate Factory Theater, hear that you want to know how we did it.

How much can an image change in a second? is one of the questions that guided the making of the final hands count beginning sounds, which lives in the space between dance, drawing, and sculpture.