Pilar Castro-Kiltz on the Intersection of Dance and Business

Photo Credit: From the Horse’s Mouth 2014 Celebrating Phyllis Lamhut; Pilar Castro-Kiltz

glass ceiling choreographed by Pilar Castro-Kiltz. Left to right: Rebecca Margolick, Mariel Lugosch-Ecker, Julia Mayo, Lindsey Mandolini, Jenny Stulberg, Ryan VanCompernolle, Erika Boudreau Barbee, Xi Shao, Marlon Feliz

At the intersection of dance and medicine is a shared understanding of the body’s power to heal. With the right treatment, dance medicine practitioner, and dedicated approach, the injured body of a dancer can reassemble its core elements so the body may return the spirit of that dancer to the stage where it yearns to be. By taking to the studio and stage again, that dancer can return to healing others: bodies moving through space, taking shape, volume, effort, time, and weaving it with emotion, memory, and relationship. There is a power in this act of dance, of presenting the experience of movement to an audience, which engages, entices, activates, and heals those observing the dance from the dark of the house. 

For many of us sitting, watching, and feeling along with these humans on stage, we recognize a familiar sequence of phrases. We remember the hours of classes, auditions, and rehearsals. The aroma of hairspray and sweat. The sparkle of dust drifting down from the fly, lit by a jewel box of hues from the sidelights that blind. The reassuring grip of the marley on calloused and blistered bare feet, and the sense memory, the moment, the rush that arrives in that instant just before it begins. As the lights have gone down, announcements all made, I recall the last inhale before plunging into the dance. Even from my seat in the audience, I still inhale deeply, just then. Body ready. Heart open. Begin.

Austin Tyson and Pilar Castro-Kiltz in choreography by Jenny Stulberg

Though in this precise moment of writing it’s been 18 long months since I sat in a theater (attending Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake at New York City Center was my penultimate outing before COVID lockdown began), and three years since I last performed on a stage, the sense memories will always be vivid. I no longer introduce myself as a choreographer or theater director, though, humorously, I am still sometimes introduced as a dancer by those who remember my career before this one. What does it say on my business card now? Owner and CEO, More Canvas Consulting. My days are no longer filled with tendues and grand jetés; I do not ride subways lugging tubs of costumes from studio to studio; and I don’t lead warm-up or feverishly finish, edit, and rehearse a cast in those waning hours before opening night curtain ascends. Though my office is still scattered with post-its and small scraps of paper scribbled with ideas and questions, that real estate is now filled with words and acronyms like “cost-benefit analysis,” “capital structure,” “ROI,” “EBITDA,” “NPV,” and “ATS.” As a reminder from the Muses on the creator who’s still within, a slip of paper from long ago will sometimes surface, with diagrams of bodies, sketches of a stage filled with arrows and rhythms marked out in music notes — the beginnings of choreography seen first by my mind’s eye, then captured here on whatever piece of paper was nearby, years ago. 

Grandmothers and Frogs; choreography by James Martin; dancer Pilar Castro-Kiltz

A heaviness rests on my heart for a spell when I encounter these artifacts from those days when my goals centered on presenting an evening at BAM or The Joyce, and I remember the fulfillment of being a choreographer, director, dancer, actor, musician, playwright, producer — a Dance Theater Artist. For a moment, I let my memories drift through the studios on 2nd Avenue at NYU Tisch where I earned my MFA; the view from the stage at Radio City Music Hall, performing a piece I had created; soloing at Joe’s Pub; taking notes from the house of the Richard Rodgers Theatre assisting Rob Ashford, Director on Broadway; the makeshift stages we created in Central Park; the festivals all over the city, where for years my company, Ensemble Dance shared the new pieces we’d made in the excitement and fervor of our twenties in New York. Composers, designers, poets, performers, choreographers, playwrights — we were all artists. Together. 

It’s so tangible, the everything-essence of that decade, that I imagine I could pick it up like a maquette, the snapshot diorama of a stage, and then peer in as the action unfolds. So caught up in remembering, I briefly forget why I left that identity, lifestyle, and existence, to fashion another. I wonder at the changes in me that led me to the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania to earn an MBA, and now to building a strategy and marketing firm that serves business across industries: tech, healthcare, higher ed, financial and legal services, arts organizations, and more.

Photo credit: Samantha Siegel.

They were subtle, complex changes that accreted over time until the momentum was enough to bring a serious shift to my life. I do not regret changing my career. The business I’m building now, is fulfilling and deliciously challenging each day. It’s been a privilege to have the resources and space to transition and grow. And in truth, I have always been an entrepreneur, so the change is less extreme than it might seem. Directly from undergrad at Princeton University, I went into the MFA program at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and that first summer I started Ensemble Dance, building a company from the ground-up. The trajectory for an independent choreographer and director is also a business in its own right — choosing projects and collaborators to build a portfolio, reputation, and network, to craft a pathway to more commissions, contracts, and growth. 

Photo by Valerie Ford. Scene from Liminal by Pilar Castro-Kiltz, Matthews Acting Studio at Princeton University

Then in 2013, I founded the Princeton Arts Alumni to fill the gap I observed for a network of artists connected to Princeton, building that same strength of community and resources that historically existed for alums in other industries, but had not yet emerged for the arts. Having learned how to run and build a dance theater company, selling out theaters and building ongoing relationships with artists and presenters, I began providing business services for other artists, fulfilling a need for industry-specific marketing and strategy, while providing more reliable income for the artists whom I employed and trained to provide this array of arts admin services. The core, creator-self within me assembled a portfolio of entities, projects, businesses, that together fulfilled my desires to tell stories that moved people, to bring people closer to an understanding of themselves and of others, and to facilitate people realizing their own vision for the present and future they wanted to experience. Whether sitting in the house at Dixon Place, watching a play I had written, directed, choreographed, and produced, guiding artists through starting their own theater company, or attending a fundraiser I had organized to foster community and connection, it was all arts and it was all business, and it was all my own way of creating. 

Pilar Castro-Kiltz

I remember the weekly appointments with Physical Therapists, (shoutout here to Emily Sandow, PT, DPT, OCS, who kept me returning to stage and studio for years), and am still grateful to those who repaired and informed my body on how to stay well, through class, pilates, kinesiology, physical therapy, massage — it takes a broad and diverse community of experts to keep those stories and powerful dance experiences going onstage, which we, the audience, have the privilege to enjoy. Those dancing bodies that through the wild, virtuosic, poignant, gripping choreographies move us to push away the daily and to immerse ourselves in the eternal as we watch a dance unfold — they require maintenance, repair, and attention — the healing hands of dance medicine. Practitioners of dance medicine not only heal and treat dancers, but they also heal and treat the audience, who are renewed by the experience of watching the dance. 

In 2019, when Andrea Zujko approached me and More Canvas Consulting to help her realize the dream of Dance Medicine Education Initiative (DMEI), I could see her vision clearly. It has been a pleasure working with her since then, providing strategic advisement and marketing services so that DMEI could become a reality. Congratulations Andrea, on celebrating one year of DMEI, which officially launched in September of 2020. Here’s to many more years of bringing health to dance and the healing power of dance to the world.