Shuffle Evolution

Ciara Castro:
My name is Ciara Castro, and today I’m just going to give you a little story about shuffling, what that is, shuffle dance. I’m not sure if most of you are familiar with it. You might be through the power of social media and virality, or if you are a music enthusiast or a dance enthusiast, you might see it in the back of the club with a grungy music, if I’m being honest. So again, very happy to be here, but to more so start with this story, I want to give a little back end about who I am and who I was as a little girl because I still see myself existing as that person today.

Ciara Castro:
This little girl was super relentless. I come from a very modest, traditional, Hispanic background. I was born and raised in South Texas. I’ve been in Austin for about three, three and a half years, so I’m very proud to be Texas born and raised, and I take a lot of pride in my culture, my family dynamics, and just the qualities that I see in all these past versions of me existing today.

Ciara Castro:
To get to the meat and potatoes of the story, I go to college as a first generational college student, and I come from a very small town once again, so going into a college was a culture shock. I go to this festival through friends, and through this festival, I discover shuffling, eventually. For music festivals, the primary music is electronic dance music. We love it. We love dancing. Anyways, I was there, and I felt like I just melted into a community that I had not known existed before.

Ciara Castro:
Again, I think about those past lives and the feelings I felt in those environments as a young girl coming out of this small town, and I still find those qualities in people and community today that I connect with. I find a lot of those people in Austin, to be honest.

Ciara Castro:
Now today, through my career of shuffling, it started off in social media, and 2020 is when my first video on TikTok went viral. Prior to that, I was already on Instagram. Prior to that, I was on Facebook, and prior to that, I was on Myspace. Anyone? Yeah! It is so funny today to see how things have evolved and how this word influencer and content creator has come about because that’s been what I’ve become, and I’m just so prideful about it. I’m so happy about it, and there’s a lot of self-inspiration that has to get pulled from myself in order to keep going.

Ciara Castro:
If you would’ve asked me as a little girl, what did I imagine myself to be when I growed up, I never would’ve imagined I would’ve been a dancer, much less a professional dancer and much less someone that could have curated that for myself, if I’m being honest. I feel like it’s been very brave to pioneer something far beyond what sometimes someone can imagine.

Ciara Castro:
Needless to say, today I have also taken shuffling to festival stages. In 2021, I took a team of eight dancers to HARD summer music festival for the first time ever in the festival industry, that shuffling has ever existed on a stage in a large-scale team in that type of format in front of 20,000 people. After that, I just pitched myself and worked my way in the industry, and then we land at EDC Las Vegas opening ceremonies.

Ciara Castro:
Another opportunity that we got to grace was Groove Cruise. I got to tour with a couple artists, and amongst that just exclusive gigs with some of my favorites, like Oliver Heldens, A Craze, and a bunch of techno artists because I love techno, and that is where we’re at today.

Ciara Castro:
Now, one of the most proud things that I hold near and dear to my heart is the community I’ve been able to help build here in Austin, Texas. Behind me, you’ll just see some class pictures floating. I started these classes at the end of 2021, and they have grown into dozens and over hundreds of people, not only here in Austin, but throughout Texas. Not just here in Texas, but I also tour and teach classes throughout the nation, so there is so many people.

Ciara Castro:
I like to think that there’s not a city that I can’t go to and I don’t have a couch to sleep on. There’s just so many friends I’ve been able to connect with over the years of social media so organically that I’ll just never take for granted. For that reason, I just hold everything again close to my heart.

Ciara Castro:
There’s even two of my students here in this room who are now just two of my greatest friends in the world. But it’s amazing what community can do for you and how much you can grow as a person as well because I’ve just had a lot of self-growth through this journey.

Ciara Castro:
Amongst performing and pioneering that space along with educating not just in person, but also online, I’ve been able to connect with thousands and thousands of people. I also have competed in the battle space, which is just a bunch of pieces of the pie. When it does come to shuffling, I do hold a national championship in the battle space, which really pulls a lot of crazy character out of me. Thank you. But I’m so happy to first and foremost just be a dancer. My expression is very important to me amongst with every other person I have the opportunity to work with.

Ciara Castro:
That is my story. That is the beautiful story of shuffling. To end this, since I just supported this whole talk with pictures, shuffling is a beautiful dance that is footwork-based. It specializes in footwork. It’s very underground. It was originally for the Misfits. It was created in the 1980s in Melbourne, Australia, so you’ll sometimes see the name tagged to Melbourne shuffling. You can look on YouTube. It was really popular in 2010, I believe, when the song LMFAO Every Day I’m Shuffling, got very popular.

Ciara Castro:
A fun fact about that is people in that video are still today active and still people I can talk to and connect with. So, it’s such a new age, and it’s such a beautiful thing to be involved with. Thank you.