We were lucky to catch up with Andrés Escobar Toledo recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Andrés thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I started participating when I was 5 years old at my school, but I never thought that this could be my path. The teacher told my mother “do you know that he won’t get off the stage anymore?” This was in 1995, in a city, Rancagua, where the possibilities of being an artist are not the closest, there you can work in engineering, law, agriculture. School dance and theater workshops were always my safe space.
Then at 16 years old I began to think that I will have to decide what career I wanted to study.
I always danced and did theater, I didn’t have good results in mathematics, physics or chemistry.
At the age of 19 I went to the capital of Chile, Santiago, to study theater and then complement it with dance.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

In 2013 I started dancing in an unusual contemporary dance company, where the members were, in addition to actors and dancers, lawyers, psychologists, engineers, and yoga teachers. dance or movement had a particular place in each person, which made this company something different from what we saw in the arts. This could also be seen in their staging. That’s where my path in the arts begins.
I had the opportunity to be assistant director of this company for 4 years and to participate in different formats of works, such as: performance, opera, theater, contemporary dance, street works, musicals, etc.
We went on tour to Amsterdam, Marseille and Hamburg. We work with more than 100 people on interdisciplinary works. We work about two months for each show. This allowed me to learn other languages, other ways of moving the body and being able to work with all the particularities.

I began to understand that creation not only resides in bodies that have gone through performing arts schools and also that have many possibilities for creation. Not just those established by the university. I destructured the way I thought and reorganized the way I created.
I began to find the meaning of the work by taking charge of the bodies they represent. Find the particularity in each performer and delve into it, to make a show coherent with the body we are seeing.
In this way, I began to delve into how I have been learning to work with my body and thus build a methodology that allows me to delve deeper into other people, whether in staging or training.
My work allows people to find their own bodies, dimensions, volumes, heights. It allows them to be aware of what they have and how they can use it.
Currently, I work in performing arts (theater/dance) and audiovisual: feature films, short films and music videos. In the last named I have been developing my own view of the choreographic and the scenic, allowing me to create my own language that is at the service of the work.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

It seems to me that, mainly, art must be a space to appreciate and reflection on what we have witnessed. Something has happened in front of our eyes. Whatever discipline. We have attended something that presents “X” theme. The artists must get away from putting a moral look at what we get. We must get rid of a tymp of our subjectivity, as individuals, and representative what we are working on. Our opinion about whether it is “bad or good” must be left out. Or at least, question us what is noisy while we create. We must address each space as something that appears in its purest state, something that appears genuine. The “how” address that creation? It is a decision, about language and forms of creation, which to take who guides.
Many times we stay that art has to “educate”, but at times that leads us to underestimate the public, we treat them as they were not able to understand. Many times the function of educating, it is confused to explain and that is when the main objective is lost, we are going around the same, but in different ways.
Sometimes, that can be seen as if the public were not able to understand, and we artists explain again and again.
It seems to me that we have to consider that art at the possibility of mystery. That we are not in control of the work once created. The important thing is in the process. I say this, because that is when we have to be attentive to the judicious look that can apparent. Is the character?, Is the light of the photo?, Is the movement of music?, Of dance?, Etc. and then it will be seen whether or not it is consistent.
I find the conversation about the morlalities of these new times important. Social movements that are today named as horizons. As today we are living. Today many things are happening in the world.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

In the beginning, when I studied at the theater school, I was a student very attached to “how you should do things.” This, at times, lined the possibility of creation that could be experiencing. It became a formal performance. Right in your tone. Once outside the university, I realized that nothing really happened, if I subverted the rules of the game. Inhabit the creation from the real position of moving in that space. Not in a as if. That is theoretical. But, in the possibility of inhabiting that other language, with your own tools. Exit the comfort zone.
Because it will always bring a benefit. If it does not work, then it is not out there and other possibilities immediately appear.
When I started to dance, I was always in Chilean and Latin American folklore groups. Then, some dances were in a couple and certain types of movements were made, which finally formed a dance.
Improvisation moments were transformed into a kind of movements soup. The same steps appeared in almost all people, only as combined in different ways. There was a kind of language serialization.
Years later, when I resume dance after studying theater, I arrive at this company (contemporary dance) (Jose Vidal & Cía.) Where the members were dancers, actors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, etc. Where improvisation was basically part of their language. With a body language where there were no “steps” with shapes “, but there was a way of moving, where the body is organized disorganizedly. Liquid.
To begin to understand this language, I had to inhabit many “unlearn” about my ways and my body. Literally disarticulate the body to inhabit it in a fluid and non -mechanized way. In addition, the connection with the environment was demanding. We were about 50 bodies in motion. Moving at the same time, with the same intensity collectively, was very novel for me. While before, he danced with many people, the dialogue was less direct with them. The choreography had to be followed.
In the company the ability to perceive increased, it became almost like telepathic communication. I understood what “dialogue.” My voice appeared inhabiting my body. I understood being on stage.
I met my body so that now I can understand different languages and inhabit them. In addition to the other experiences with dance, such as folklore, hip-hip, jazz dance, ballet. In different formats, live, video clips, cinema, theater, performance.
It seems to me that understanding that there are rules to play, allows us to explore within some possibilities, more also I think you have to look at the opposite of our structures. Between both spaces, there are endless colors.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/andresescobartoledo
• Instagram: @andresescobartoledo
• Linkedin: andresescobartoledo
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@andresescobartoledo