We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Santiago Castaneda Guerrero. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Santiago below.

Santiago, appreciate you joining us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I think i was 12 years old when i decided to pursue Dance as a career, my whole life i wanted to be a vet but i saw a huge world of possibilities when i started dancing i fell in love with the idea of becoming a professional while still doing something i was passionate about, it wasn’t easy since my family doesn’t come from money, and ballet is expensive so my ballet teachers and family would do the impossible to help me get out of Colombia where i am from and come to the USA to train properly, so i left home when i was 16 so go to a professional school and ive been following my dreams since then.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I was 9 years old when I first started dancing, i was in school, and my teachers Andrea and Ivan, had just opened up their school and wanted to give scholarships to kids that couldn’t afford the training and i was very intrigued because i had never seen ballet, so they asked us who wanted to try it and showed us some videos and did some like physical tests on us and i was in, 17 years later im a professional ballet dancer and model sometimes. It hasn’t been easy because it takes most of your time and lots of discipline, and self discovering all the time so you always have to work but it is so rewarding to see your improvement as an artist and human that is something i wouldn’t change. With my work what i basically do ii perform, that being said my services would be performing or entertainment, i can also teach ballet and model. What sets apart from other is my perseverance, i think with everything ive been trough im a person that doesn’t give up easily and makes everything work. I am very proud of being where i am in life and who i am, you know you always have plans but most of the time they change but i wouldn’t change anything for the growth I’ve experienced specially since becoming a professional ballet dancer.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

It was 2020 and the pandemic had just hit us hard, i was in Miami and everything was closing so it was a very stressful period because that was also my last year in Miami and auditions for new jobs were being canceled and the ones that were online, all were telling me NO because of my immigrant status since we need visas (Colombians) to work in the US, so i was frustrated and said im gonna quit, but my dream was to be a dancer so i talked to my partner in that time and he also didn’t want me to quit so we had one last place and it was collage, in Memphis, TN, we reached out to friends who are very important in this community because is small and everyone knows everyone and gave them my audition material and asked them to talk to their bosses, and i was added to the last selection stage of the auditions which had become online because of covid, and i got it. And here we are, grateful for everything that happened to get here.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Society should be more sensitive to the arts, what we look to do with our work is make the audience even for a second make them feel something or teach them something nee and exciting, nowadays dance is used to portray stories, real life stories of everything that has happened, in our company, which is a BICOP company, we look to teach the community that arts can change lives like it for all of is in the organization, but we got to be willing to learn and explore the arts, go to shows, talk to people about it, support them, even if it just sharing it on social media, it helps.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Santiagoc327

Image Credits

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