Canvas Rebel: Meet Charly Santagado
We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Charly Santagado. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Charly below.
charly, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today we’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
When I entered Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University as a Piano Performance major in 2013, I was troubled by the realization that while the musicians occasionally engaged with the dancers and actors to fulfill this or that requirement, they rarely diverged from their insular circles. I soon discovered that this practice wasn’t some quirk of the music department; my minors in creative writing and dance further demonstrated the unsettling unspoken boundaries between artistic disciplines at Rutgers.
One of my primary goals as an artist is to deconstruct these boundaries by investigating and revealing the undeniable interconnectedness of artistic mediums. Since founding mignolo dance in 2017, I’ve been developing a “translation” methodology that was born out of my senior honors thesis in philosophy: The Art of Translation. From using the sheet music of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony to create an original live dance work to adapting Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None into a feature-length screendance, my experiences creating nuanced movement interpretations of non-dance artworks have both challenged contemporary dance enthusiasts to reevaluate their ideas about “what dance can do,” and drawn in new audiences by making dance accessible to them through the lens of other, more familiar forms (e.g. music, literature, etc.)
In tandem with my artistic production, I have spent the past six years developing Movenglish®, a movement language-in-progress that translates individual words into articulated movement, allowing for consistent conversions of written and spoken forms into dance. Through my Dance MFA at Bennington College, I have developed translation guidelines and methodologies that I will continue to explore through my work as an independent artist, with mignolo dance, and likely an experimental PhD program in Europe.
awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I am a dancer, choreographer, director, writer, and curator dedicated to forging interdisciplinary connections across diverse artistic mediums and practices. Originally from Orlando, Florida, and currently based between the United States and Belgium, I graduated with highest honors from Rutgers University in 2017 with a major in philosophy and minors in dance, music, and creative writing. The following summer, I founded a contemporary dance company called mignolo dance (mignolo.dance) with my sister Eriel. Eriel and I both started dancing at a very young age, and were also competitive gymnasts all the way through college where we were on Rutgers University’s D1 team. We were homeschooled our entire lives until attending Rutgers, which allowed us to dive deeply into both dance and gymnastics as well as competitive piano playing alongside academics.
I’ve trained, performed, taught and presented internationally, and am currently finishing up my MFA in Dance through Bennington College’s low-residency program. I think one factor that sets my dance work apart is the unique way I combine academic/intellectual rigor with intensive physicality. I am also dedicated to bringing forward abstract concepts from philosophy and linguistics through storytelling and theatricality. Furthermore, writing critical reviews of diverse dance shows enables me to think deeply about the works of others in the field, and gives me another lens through which to view my own practices. I am most proud of my attention to detail, my ability to combine specificity with an open-ended approach, and my stubborn pursuit of the impossible.
how can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
There is an infamous piece of information that has been circulating around artistic circles for the past few years. Though I no longer remember the percentages or exact language of the survey that’s often quoted, the conclusion sticks with me: despite the fact that the vast majority of Americans believe the arts are essential to a functioning and thriving society, the vast minority of Americans believe that artists deserve to be substantially compensated for their work. This seemingly obvious discrepancy is incredibly telling. There are a huge number of factors that make it nearly impossible to make a career out of being an artist (especially a dance artist) in the United States. What can people do? For one, provide financial support to “poor starving artists” when they are able. We will make better art if we have a stable roof over our heads, food on the table, etc. And second, elect officials and support companies that prioritize sustainable careers for artists of all disciplines. If we recognize the value of art in society, then we must also attend to the people who make that art possible.
what’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
One lesson I’ve worked to unlearn is the notion that one must be ruthlessly competitive in order to be successful. The gymnastics competitions and standardized tests of my youth drilled the value of my inborn competitive spirit. But most of my successes, however modest, have been the result of collaboration. Now when I meet someone who is skilled in an area that interests me, rather than viewing them as my competition, I approach them, tell them how impressed I am by what they are doing, and see how we might be able to work together in the future. Despite being counter to the way that many people are raised in this era, I think the value of collaboration over competition applies across most if not all disciplines. This is not to say that a little healthy competition can’t help rev my creative engine, but now I try to compete with myself and my own expectations rather than to constantly compare myself and my achievements to others.
