Angel CastroBy Susan Allred ProsserHALO Movement Collective34 JAVAMAGAZINEPhoto: Susan Allred Prosser
Photo: Susan Allred ProsserAngel Castro moves like he fully inhabits his body. He has to. It’s literallyhis job to know what he looks like. It’s what he does for a living and whathe does for love and artistic expression. Angel is a dancer, choreographer,and founder of a dance company called the HALO Movement Collective.He’s also the company’s artistic director.Angel’s mission is to tell stories and create moods by melding dancers’ movementswith fashion. He creates opportunities for his audience to work through thoughtsand feelings they might not be able to access through other mediums. In otherwords, Angel’s business is to understand the ways that the form and line ofdancers’ bodies communicate. But he didn’t plan to be a choreographer.From a young age, Angel had been acting in musical theater. He didn’t startdancing until he was a senior at South Mountain High, a dance magnet school.But he quickly became good enough to audition and to be accepted into the ASUSchool of Dance, where he later earned a BFA.“I just wanted to dance. I was so against anything else. I didn’t want any part ofcreating the work or being responsible for a company,” he said. But his seniortransition project required him to research a city to move to and develop aplan for establishing a dance company – even if that wasn’t the career path hethought he wanted.“So I looked all around and realized that if I had to open a dance company, Iwanted to do it in Arizona.” That realization led to a project he worked on withhis mother, Cristina Castro, who had been a fashion designer. Angel designedcostumes for each of the six dancers in his project. Cristina used her training tohelp Angel sew costumes that looked beautiful and could stand up to the rigors ofa dance performance.“To me, what a dancer looks like is as important as what the body is doing. I noticewhat the dancer is wearing and how that looks when they move,” he said. “All ofthat is a part of the story I’m telling. It’s all part of the mood and the experience theaudience will have.”Even though he was convinced about the strength of his ideas for making thecostumes part of the dancer’s role, he wasn’t sure how the work would bereceived. “After that first show, I heard the applause and I knew that I’d connectedwith the audience. I’d shown them something they could relate to, and I thought,‘This is what I should be doing,’” he said.Angel casts that same eye for detail over every element of the HALO MovementCollective’s shows. He is keenly aware of the fact that most dancers need a “dayjob” in order to practice their art. “When I create a show, my first concern is forthe dancers. Instead of spending lots of money on sets or a bunch of lighting andtechnicians, I budget the dancers’ pay right at the start,” he said.This approach creates a bond of trust between him and his dancers and makes hima stronger choreographer and artistic director.“If your choreography isn’t strong enough to stand on its own, without [lightingtricks] or fancy sets, then you aren’t doing your job,” Angel said. His dance piecesuse sparse scenery and minimal lighting effects, to ensure that those things don’tdistract from the expressive choreography.“I’ll sew the costumes, build the sets, whatever it takes. I learned how to takephotographs for social media, and I even shoot and edit video,” he says. This DYIattitude also makes Angel a jack-of-all-trades who benefits from having a partnerwho understands the demands of his work.JAVA 35MAGAZINE