Today we’d like to introduce you to Teresa Toogie Barcelo.
Hi Teresa, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
As a first-generation Cuban-Spaniard American, performance and art have been a part of my life since I was an embryo. My mother was a professional Flamenco dancer; my father a triple threat from the golden age of Cuban entertainment. As a child, my desire to dance was undeniable.
My family could not afford professional training, so my mother cleaned the dance studio and sewed costumes in exchange for my ballet and flamenco classes. Eventually, I found myself enrolled in fine arts magnet programs at Norland Middle and P.A.V.A.C. Miami Northwestern, followed by New World School for the Arts. Organizations like Miami Light Project (MLP) permanently instilled a deep love of classical, cultural, and social dance in my heart.
My first dance job came at the age of 16 with a company that provided entertainment at Bar/Bat mitzvahs. I started teaching at many local dance studios in Miami, and by 18, I was managing a studio in Kendal and Gogo dancing at many clubs. Eventually, I was introduced to the entertainment company Circ-X, where I was first exposed to interactive, immersive performance art, site-specific work, and bizarre characters.
I got really good at being a cat at our weekly cabaret showcase titled “Chat Noir,” where I experienced how artists rapidly develop choreography and prototyped improvisational character work. I continued to perform on Univision, Telemundo, and in the occasional music video, all while back up dancing for drag queens and falling in love with popping/locking/waacking/house in my free time. Looking back, I am so grateful for the rich variety of movement opportunities I experienced in Miami, a city with a unique blend of cultures unlike anywhere else in the world.
In 2009, I was growing tired of playing the “sexy Latina” to get by. I started working with Tanisha Scott in a couple of dance hall artists’ music videos (Sean Paul, Sean Kingston), which led to performing with Sean Kingston on “So You Think You Can Dance.”
This experience in “the industry” combined with the cultural diversity and abundant creative energy I felt in LA prompted me to start planning to move from Miami to the City of Angels. Fueled by the opportunity to create my own narrative, I worked a six-month cruise ship contract to save up the funds I needed, then in 2010, I drove across the country, determined to find a way to live off my creativity without having to sexualize or objectify myself.
Since arriving in LA, I have lived and worked as a creative chameleon, constantly adapting and responding to each context in which I work. Weaving between the concert and commercial worlds, I have conceptualized and choreographed fantastical, experimental dance films and mainstream music videos.
I have performed at The Music Center, Choreographers Carnival, Chinatown’s King Hing Theater, The Greek Theater, Grand Performances’ water fountain, and countless clubs, studios, and theaters. My career expanded into performing and choreographing site-specific work as the Associate Artistic Director of Heidi Duckler Dance, which sharpened my senses, honed my ability to transform environments through movement and excavate images that could not be expressed in any other location.
I have operated as an independent artist for the entirety of my career, and I believe that some of the most innovative work happens between gigs, in the grit of the city, and outside of traditional structures and models. It is so important to make time for creating the projects you want to see come to life. Creating work that represents YOU – without any filters – will be the catalyst for your success.
For instance, I collaborated with Machete Bang Bang, Smac, and Rick Darge to create this dance film: https://vimeo.com/165108830. It received a Vimeo staff pick, caught the attention of UK director Henry Shcofield, and he tracked me down to choreograph Dua Lipa’s “New Rules” video. This video triggered momentum in my career, put me on Billboard’s list of most iconic choreographers of the decade, and unlocked many other wonderful collaborations.
Most recently, I had the pleasure of directing my first official music video for the band Lucius: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvJe7TwO7qA. This was such a great experience and another successful moment in my attempt to normalize leading with care and compassion in the industry.
I approach all my work with the same intention: to transport the performers and audience via multi-sensory experiences. Ultimately, I want to create opportunities for accidental meditation and make work that can alter both the artists’ and the audiences’ state of being.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Like many of my fellow creators and dear friends, I have grappled with all of the quintessential freelance artist challenges. Parallel with my creative career is the tortuous, ever-changing path to pay my bills, which at one point included working at a strip club and riding a scooter from Tarzana to Santa Monica four times per week for a nannying job.
There have been countless “no”s alongside all of the opportunities I have enjoyed, and I remain deeply committed to advocating for fair wages and safe working conditions for dancers, as well as the mental and emotional health of our creative community.
Significant portions of the commercial dance agency, Hollywood, and film worlds tell you to fit into the “sexy girl dancer box,” and if you do not fit into that box, you are on your own. We are told to put on our heels, take “body-conscious” pictures, and effectively uphold and reinforce the impossible beauty standards of our society.
Although I absolutely believe in radical self-love and sexual expression, I do not believe artists are defined by their ability to reach these unattainable requirements of “beauty,” which are wrought with racism, classism, homophobia, self-hate, and more. Neither wanting to fit into this mold nor being given the space for my inherent, authentic self, I transformed my frustration with this reality into fuel and inspiration in carving out my own path.
I wanted to cultivate opportunities for my fellow artists that hold space for our intersectional identities, pure creative flow, and exploration. I pitched my improvisational, meditative movement class to countless studios over two years, but was turned down because “there wasn’t a demand for this kind of class.”
I was told nobody would come to a class that did not revolve around learning choreography, yet after meeting my dear friend Jillian Meyers, who connected me with Shaun Evaristo at The Movement Lifestyle, my Creating Movement class (now titled wiggle room) came to life! For over seven years, we jammed together weekly with a live soundscape by my musical collaborator Joe Berry. One of the most challenging parts of COVID-19 was the loss of this class. Collectively, the community and I had come to rely on this shared space as a place for experimentation, release, meditative movement, and healing.
The process of developing wiggle room mirrors my personal journey of finding my creative voice. For the past decade, I have worked primarily within the creative context of others, and over the past five years, I have felt a calling to return to my roots in proscenium dance. To create a live performance that explores how we shed our inhibitions and externally created limiting beliefs.
To explore how humans navigate adversity and how we – frequently unknowingly – develop emotional and spiritual cycles that define our lives. And with that, I’m excited to share that I am creating a full-length work titled Metanoia that will premiere as part of the 2020 Dance at The Odyssey Festival in June 2022!
Metanoia is an ode to the cultural histories ingrained and embedded in my muscle memory, a confluence of archetypal moments in my parents’ lives with my persistent exploration between creativity and the conversions of energy. Tickets are on sale (https://ci.ovationtix.com/34367/production/1113008), and if you are so inspired, we are welcoming contributions to our Artists Fund here: https://givebutter.com/toogie.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
After choreographing Dua Lipa’s “New Rules” video, Dua and I continued to work together. I not only choreographed her videos and live performances, but also we entered a deeply collaborative one-on-one rehearsal process. Aiming to excavate her authentic, natural nuances, we spent hours together developing her overall performance from the inside out.
We indulged in and savored the process of creation, rather than exclusively focusing on the final product. Her stage presence and confidence expanded, and my reputation as a Creative Director/Movement Coach began to precede me. I became known as someone who supported the holistic growth of an artist, helping each performer look and feel more comfortable on stage and screen.
My process is different from the typical choreographer’s approach. I do not work to get the artist to move like me, but rather my goal is to help them authentically embody their personality and art. I tailor my process to each individual and intuitively adjust our work based on what will work best for them. It is important to me that the work we do feels collaborative; I want to know their goals and empower them to achieve their wildest dreams.
There’s a lot of talking and sharing; when we do get to moving, I typically pull from breathwork and meditation techniques to get each artist grounded and present. The wonderful thing about these tools is that they are not dance-specific, and they begin to trickle into these artists’ everyday lives. I am always hoping that our work improves my clients’ quality of life and ability to ride the enormous waves of their careers.
Together, we explore body language, an essential element of any performance. Pulling from my theatrical background and training, we focus on subtext and set intentions for each gesture and motion. From there, we go through a series of mechanical motions, so I can assess their natural movement abilities and style that serve as our foundation.
I notice what looks natural, and we develop a shared vocabulary. Simultaneously, we work on their mindset. With all the artists I have worked with including Du Lipa, Migel, Tove Lo, and Alicia Keys, I aim to liberate their minds within their bodies, release limiting beliefs, and facilitate a new understanding of movement. Dance can be anything they want it to be! I demonstrate how there can be a dance in the nuances of their breath and the journey of their gaze.
At the end of the day, I really want to instill a mindset of gratitude for the fact that we get to do this! That we have the incredible opportunity to express ourselves to the world. I think that’s why people feel good around me. I am not trying to make them someone they are not nor am I judging their abilities, but rather, I am there to amplify their already amazing artistry and help them level up as human beings and artists.
Do you have any advice for those looking to network or find a mentor?
For mentorship, networking, inspiration, and more go see things! Do things! Meet people and try new classes, experiences, and creative mediums. Learn about which venues, entities, and organizations produce regular programming and attend events of all kinds.
When something resonates with you on a visceral level, engage with the creator and create an actual friendship. Don’t worry about their following or if they’re doing something that you also want to do, reach out, connect, and build honest, generous relationships. If you are intuitively being drawn toward an artist, investigate that and allow time to reveal what this new connection is going to teach you.
Be genuine. Put out a vibe, and the right people will gravitate toward you. Don’t look at people as opportunities for self-advancement. People smell that a mile away. If that artist has a class, show up and let a relationship organically develop over time.
Before arriving in LA, two people stand out as key mentors in my creative journey. Teo Castellanos, the Director of D-Projects, a social/political dance theatre company in Miami, who I met as a freshman in high school. He was an actor with very little dance experience but worked for Miami Light Project. When guest artists came in from all over the world, he would join these classes, and I always thought that it was super cool that this artist in his late 30s, was always learning all that he could learn.
When I graduated high school, I auditioned to be in his company and got in; he quickly became a recurring character in my life. One of the characters in his award-winning one-man show was loosely based on me. Teo exposed me to meditation as an essential element of the artistic process, and this discovery completely changed my life and the way I approach creation.
He brought in master Butoh teachers, used improv techniques like the Suzuki method and viewpoints, shared Buddhist philosophers like Thich Nhat Hanh, and demonstrated the power art has to make commentary on the political, social, and structural elements of our world.
And of course, I have to honor my high “dance mother,” Michelle Murray. An amazingly powerful creator, with an exceptionally strong voice, she has always been a huge inspiration for me. In the late 90s, her best friend passed away from cancer, and she created a live performance titled Journey On about that experience. This work was the first piece I saw that demonstrated art as a space for processing and healing heavy emotions.
She showed me that you can take the hardships and create something beautiful out of it, which is reflected in my upcoming production of Metanoia, which in many ways is a celebratory memorial for my parents and family members who have passed away.
Michelle provided perspective on grief and encouraged me to continue to make my world bigger, to look beyond the horizon, and learn everything I possibly could. When I graduated from Miami Northwestern, she claimed in front of the P.A.V.A.C. dance class of 2002 that I would be on the cover of Dance magazine one day. Having very low self-esteem as a young woman, her belief in me was beyond inspiring.
To me, networking is just another word for making friends. It tends to have a negative overtone of ulterior motives, but I believe the most satisfying collaborations are when you work with friends. In roughly 2011, I saw Jillian Meyers perform and immediately felt inspired and connected to her. I thought, “if this person can be successful in the LA dance ecosystem, so can I.
If there is space for Jillian, there’s space for me and other weirdos.” So, I started attending her performances, and we were eventually introduced by Jackie Lopez of Versa-Style, who also saw the similarities in our approaches to artmaking and style. “You two NEED to know each other,” she said, and a three-hour coffee date later, we completely agreed.
Networking is inherently embedded in all creative projects. Choreographing Harry Styles’ Watermelon Sugar video felt like an enormous hug, for I was able to hire many of my close friends.
Recently, the creative, wonderful Megan Lawson asked me to perform in Adele’s Oh My God video, alongside much of our joint community including Metanoia cast member Reshma Gajjar. Everyone has their own winding, wildly interesting, and ever-changing path in this industry, and one of the most exciting parts of this career is seeing how and when our journeys intertwine and connect.
Stay connected with Toogie: http://www.teresatoogie.com/contact
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.teresatoogie.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/toogiesaurus/
Image Credits
Owen Scarlett — https://www.instagram.com/owenscarlettphoto/ and Kenny Laubbacher — https://www.instagram.com/kennyjamez/
