By Alex Daum ’20

The dance program hosted Teresa “Toogie” Barcelo to teach students in Intro to Contemporary Dance and Contemporary Dance Workshop I and II on Feb. 17.
Barcelo grew up in Miami and has been dancing for most of her life, connecting with her mother’s Spanish heritage by learning classical Spanish dances, such as the flamenco, starting at age four. When Barcelo moved to Los Angeles, she used her multiple talents in the fields of visual art, video and photo direction, choreographing and improvisation as a multi-disciplinary artist.  Barcelo met performing arts teacher Joe Schenck at Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre, where Barcelo is now the Associate Artistic Director.
Schenck told of the specific ways that Barcelo’s dance style will influence the dance students.
“I hope that the students came out of Toogie’s classes with some more tools for creating choreography and new ways for accessing original movement and creative movement […] Hopefully they will have a deeper sense of creativity […] and instead of trying to recreate other dances that they have seen I want my students to become the creators themselves,” Schenck said.
Students said that when Barcelo visited the Middle School, she focused on using the whole body to dance.
“I really took away the idea of incorporating every part of your body to express yourself through motion because I think that when many think of the word dance, the idea of only using your eyes or your fingers to help express yourself comes to mind. It was very interesting what she said, and I think we all gained something,” Jakob Adler ’20 said.