Carolina Cerisola has lived in the United States for more than 20 years. Far away from her remain the first years of her life in Haedo and her childhood in Ramos Mejia, in the western suburbs, where he grew up. However, one of the various tattoos that mark her skin is clear: “Made in Argentina.”
That, along with a phrase with her father’s handwriting that says “I adore you”, show that she does not forget her origins as a neighborhood girl who was made from below and has been rubbing shoulders with great music stars for a long time thanks to her talent. : dance.
Of course, what happens is that it is difficult to associate that Carolina with whom for twenty years she has not stopped succeeding in the north country, where she knew how to shine in shows of artists very famous and conquered millions of people in the studios of television. But like every story has a beginning, hers goes back to the Estudiantil Porteño club, where she practiced artistic gymnastics.
«I grew up in Haedo until I was ten. In 1990 my parents separated and I moved to Ramos. He was rebellious and changed schools often. She didn’t talk much, she was shy. One summer in Villa Gesell I discovered ‘The tasty possums’ and that changed everything, “she said. Through a friend she met there, she began to dance salsa and years later she began working in a restaurant in the Recoleta neighborhood of Buenos Aires where a show was put on by a Cuban dancer who later connected her with José Luis “El Puma”. Rodriguez.
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She quickly became a dancer on the Venezuelan singer’s permanent staff and, before turning 18, on a tour of Miami, another transcendental situation occurred. Carolina knew the United States because her maternal grandparents had moved to Los Angeles in the 1970s and she went to visit them every summer. “I preferred to go to the coast with my friends,” she confessed, remembering that she was bored by going to that country. However, when she returned to work with “Puma” Rodríguez, everything was different.
«My mom was visiting my grandparents in Los Angeles and called me to come visit them. I was still a minor and I asked my aunt to take me salsa dancing. She produced a fake ID to let me in, pretending that she was 21. That day I was impressed with the level of the dancers and with a proposal. A man came to me and said: ‘We are filming a video of Marc Anthony. Could you come tomorrow?’” he recounted.
The young woman returned to Ramos Mejía to tell her boyfriend that she was moving to Los Angeles and after working with Marc Antonhy the doors opened: she went on a tour of Europe with the Mexican Jonnhy Vázquez, nicknamed “The Prince of Salsa”. », with whom he won the dance world championship until the artistic duo dissolved in 2001.
Looking for new jobs, she was a “Go-Go Dancer” (the girl who danced on a baffle) until she auditioned for the Deep bowling alley and met actor Ivan Kane, creator of the Forty Deuce, a burlesque-themed bar and nightclub concept. That was her door to enter that world.
Burlesque is an artistic discipline that is associated with variety theater, influenced by cabaret concepts and aesthetics such as music hall and vaudeville. Thus, she began to do dances that fused eroticism and art, with costumes made of feathers, glitter, on stages with lights of different shades.
From Ramos Mejía to the artistic explosion in the United States
“By 2001, when the Forty Deuce opens with a tuxedo-clad jazz trio and exuberant dancers, the place explodes with people. Mine was more instinctive. I, from the neighborhood, combined a little what I knew of artistic gymnastics and salsa. He went on stage and had Brad Pitt, Mick Jagger, Cameron Diaz, Sting and Fiona Apple within meters. It was natural,” said the dancer.
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Its popularity grew so much that in 2003, it was featured on the television talk show of the famous host Jimmy Kimmel. At that time, she also participated in the video clip for the song “Miss”, where she seduces the singer Justin Timberlake and an advertisement for the clothing brand Guess, where she did a striptease and put on a jean.
The Forty Deuce not only landed her on TV, it also landed her onstage with Sting, the world-famous British musician. «He was with the Sacred Love tours and they called me, initially, to record a video that was going to be shown on the screens. But a few days before the show, his agent told me that it was a good idea to also dance live. I accompanied him in Los Angeles, in Madison, in Seattle, in Germany. One day his wife invited me to his birthday and I began to meet his family. I ended up as best friends with his daughter Kate, I went on vacation with them to Italy and New York ».
How did you become an entrepreneur?
The Forty Deuce’s success exploded with a television reality show that followed Carolina and the entire team day by day. Exhausted, she began to think that it was going to be of the life of her. “She told me ‘I don’t want to work for someone, everything gets boring, physically it’s too much’. She left her soul on stage. But then I met Sascha Escandon, an MTV employee, a former dancer and an American who had lived in Argentina, and she is my current partner,” she said. In 2008, with her, he founded Floor Productions.
During the first months of the company, they did some research work and ended up preparing an improv show with musicians and dancers of all genres to create collaborations on the spot. Then they took the shows to the King King Club in Hollywood and their services began to be more and more requested. In parallel, Carolina created the Open Floor Society, an NGO “to promote empowerment through movement, dance and music.”
“I feel like I was in the right place at the right time. Or that I made decisions. What awaited me in Argentina, what could I do, show my tail on TV? I was a lover of artistic gymnastics, I competed, but that also implied diets and feeling that I was not free. I came from listening to rock, Charly García, and salsa opened my eyes. Then burlesque showed me a way. It is often confused with Striptease, but no. It can be fine or tacky. I chose the first, “reflected the native of Ramos Mejía.
However, although it appeared dozens of times on American TV and was even talked about in the New York Times, it never promoted its career in Argentina and the big producers in our country were never interested in its products. A regular drinker of mate together with her Italian husband and the son she has with him, she tried to offer her artistic projects in the land where she was born. “We tried to offer the burlesque show to Faena, but the offer did not prosper,” she said.
Romance with Owen Wilson
Between 2003 and 2005, Carolina was dating the famous American actor Owen Wilson. “I met him on the street, while I was walking and he was on a break from filming the movie Starsky and Hutch. We started talking and he asked me for my number,” revealed the dancer, who is now married to the Italian music producer Saverio Principini.
In those years, Cosmopolitan magazine made the romance known: “After the suicide attempt, we are pleased to know that the charming Owen Wilson is getting his life back on track.” And the paparazzi added that “Carolina helped put a smile back on the actor’s face.”
Without wishing to give too many details of that relationship, she stressed that “I was always very shy despite what I do and at that time I could not communicate 100% because I did not speak English well. That relationship helped me perfect the language », she smiles. “We stayed as friends for life. We talk in difficult times.”