Today we’d like to introduce you to Micaela Barrett.
Hi Micaela, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
A native New Yorker, I grew up in the “forgotten borough” of Staten Island (home of the Wu Tang Clan). It was a gift to have had Manhattan and an endless variety of arts so closely accessible, and from a very young age I knew I was heading for a life of art. From tiny books filled with made-up languages to an early career in stage design, the practice of art and creativity has been a central focus of my life.
I started dancing tango when I was a teenager, it was a way to find the hidden magic of that city and opened up doors to music and movement that I’ve been benefitting from since. For college I studied theatrical design, it was a viable means toward a career in the arts, and the idea of creating temporary worlds brought out my interest in solving puzzles and learning new things.
It was a specialized program and very difficult, so by the time I graduated I was dealing with quite a bit of burnout and instead of going on right away to work in stage and films, I spent some time traveling around California and Oregon volunteering on organic farms and learning about food production. From there I lived in Washington, DC for a few years where I worked as a graphic designer and put together my first full series of paintings as a fine artist.
I moved back to NYC to take a graphic design job with one of the most exciting theatre productions at the time, a show called Sleep No More from the UK-based production company Punchdrunk. Throughout this whole time, I kept dipping my toe back into the world of tango, imagining that art would be my main focus and I would dance as a hobby. The more I practiced it, however, the more I wanted tango to be a driving force in my life. And as a young artist working on one of the hippest projects in the city that never sleeps, the New York tango scene was the cherry on top of a glut of artistic access. I would finish my work day just in time for a drink at the house bar where I could catch the performers getting into their roles; then walk ten blocks to a tango party with 150 people dancing until 2 am on a Wednesday.
It was an unsustainable pace for me, though grand, but needless to say the move to Cleveland was a bit of a culture shock. I came here with my dance partner, Alberto Ramos Cordero, who was teaching in NYC when we met. After starting to work together we moved down to Buenos Aires for about a year to train with our teachers and the pioneers of this dance. One of the NY tango organizers (Adam Hoopengardner) is from Cleveland and suggested it as a possible place to build community. We loved the idea, moved here in 2015 with a couple bucks and a dream, and ever since have been trying to help build in the same sense of magic and wonder one can get when surrounded by artists.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
They say it takes 3-5 years to stabilize a new business, and that a large majority of businesses don’t last. I’ve always tended toward the world of independent work and freelance and went into this role of small business owner with the same spirit of confidence in my problem-solving. The last 8 years have been a staggering examination of how difficult it can be to navigate the bureaucracy and motivations of this world while attempting to maintain one’s own integrity and authenticity as an artist and a human.
We were just heading for a sense of that stability in the beginning of 2020, right at our 5-year mark, and now almost three later, and after multiple reopenings it feels like we’ve made it back through our first year of business. There’s a much longer conversation to be had there about the need for accessible systems, but from a personal perspective, I have found myself in a nearly decade-long cycle of chronic burnout and exhaustion, from which I still operate to this day.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
A teacher of mine once said you can focus on a breadth of multiple topics or a depth of few. Though I understand this intellectually I still find myself collecting practices as if they were decorative plates and hoping somehow to get to the nut of each one. It has left me with a sense of real wonder for this world and also a lot of questions.
With tango, my main practice and business, I learn about the strength and potential of not just one human body but two in tandem. Tango is an improvised dance, meaning we don’t really rely on memorized patterns so much as we get better at communicating and responding to one another without words. Three times a week I train in the dance studio with Alberto to keep refining our understanding of how to move together, and then at night we teach classes and host parties where people dance or sing or read a book in the corner, have a conversation at the bar or a fire pit in the back. This has been a deeply rewarding practice both personally and as an education in community building.
Through art and writing I have had a lifelong means for observing and expressing my experience of this world, to the benefit of my emotional health as well as my ability to communicate complex ideas in enough ways to get the point across. For example, my recent series of pen and ink drawings was an attempt to show visually what it can feel like to be deeply connected to someone through dance.
And I have returned to theatre arts this past year, primarily as a scenic painter for the Beck Center in Lakewood. Taking designs from concept to finished product is possibly the most valuable lesson I’ve learned from my time in school, and I’m excited to be back working with large-scale art projects and as part of a production team.
Through all of these pursuits (and many more) what I think sets me apart is maybe my unwavering commitment to representing myself and my art authentically in this world. I hope to inspire and help others to achieve the same goal, though and believe that everyone is deserving of a creative outlet in their lives.
What do you think about happiness?
There’s a moment in the creative process where you start listening to something just past those first few layers of daily thought. When I can stay there with my dance or when making a painting it feels like I’ve plugged myself into a battery source to recharge. I get this same feeling when I’m watching others practice their art, in particular in the diverse and exciting local music scenes of Cleveland, and it makes me happy to see a community engaging in support of the arts.
Pricing:
- $12 cover for parties 1st & 3rd Wednesdays, 7-10 pm guest artists featured
- $50 and up for original artwork from current inventory or commissioned pieces
- $68 for 4 weeks of tango class, discounts, and groupon available
Contact Info:
- Website: www.clevelandtango.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/
clevelandtangoschool - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/clevelandtangoschool
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@clevelandtangoschool
- Other: www.micaelabarrett.com
Image Credits
Steven Thull
