Alum of the month: Fateful day led Atienza to his destiny as a world-renowned dance choreographer

Jefferson Hagen, MacEwan Athletics

EDMONTON – Mesmerizing, hypnotizing, captivating.

Volleyball and all of its intricate movements became an enchanted dance for the kid parked at the top of the stands watching his older sisters play.

After the games were finished, Carlo Atienza remembers returning to his room, pulling out a chess set and 'playing volleyball' by moving the pieces around in a choreographed recreation of what he'd witnessed.

"I was just mimicking the flow, the visuals of the game," he said. "When you watch it from the top bleachers and you watch how the players move out of formations and in different plays, it's mesmerizing. It's really hypnotizing. It's something that really stuck with me."

More than 25 years later and now an alumnus of the Griffins men's volleyball program, Atienza is a world-famous dancer and choreographer in Vancouver with international dance competition victories, TV appearances and incredible artistic acclaim to his credit.

His You Tube channel has more than 20,000 subscribers, while his Instagram account has almost 15,000 followers.

"The way that I stage dancers and create formations for TV and music videos, it stems back to when I first watched volleyball as a kid," he explained. "I took so many of those inspiring visuals and I implemented them into my dance.

"It's such an odd connection, but it was very distinct in my mind. I remember what I felt watching these plays and (was able to) transform that into a dance medium. It's really cool how I was able to bring that together."

In the years since playing volleyball for the Griffins from 2003-05, Carlo Atienza has become a world-renowned dance choreographer, including appearing on World of Dance, Season 2 as a choreographer for Taylor Hatala and Josh Beauchamp.

The melding of his life's two distinct passions – volleyball and dance – mirrors Atienza's own transformation from athlete to artist, which is an incredible tale of self-discovery and destiny.

As a libero on the Griffins men's volleyball team from 2003-05, Atienza was living a dream. Scouted out of Team Alberta's U16 volleyball program by then-MacEwan coach Shawn Sky, he jumped at the opportunity to join the Griffins, one of the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference's top teams.

"Getting to play for the Griffins was obviously a huge opportunity," he said. "My next goal was to make it to the Bears, junior national team, national team.

"That's where I thought I was headed up until a fateful Thursday when I decided to take a dance class at MacEwan."

Considering the moment changed the course of his life, Atienza remembers every detail.

Friends were trying to convince him to attend a hip hop dance class that winter of 2005 at MacEwan taught by 3rd Street Beat owner Luke Geldert. He was having second thoughts.

"I enjoyed music and enjoyed watching dance, but I was so fixated on my volleyball career and school at the time that it wasn't really something I wanted to venture off and explore," said Atienza. "But there was this feeling in the pit of my stomach that if I didn't at least try this I was going to regret it."

Playing it cool on the outside, he began secretly preparing very seriously.  

"I remember the night before taking that class I was so excited that I planned out what I was going to wear," he said with a laugh. "I thought I was going to get discovered, this was it. I hadn't done any dance training before that, so I didn't know what to expect. I only knew what I saw in movies."

Turns out, it was a bit like a Hollywood movie as Atienza stumbled upon his life's single greatest defining moment.

Seen competing at the Body Rock hip hop dance competition in San Diego in 2017, Carlo Atienza has come a long way since first deciding to take a hip hop dance class while at MacEwan. 

"At 19 to take your first dance class is starting pretty late," he explained. "But taking that class was a glorious awakening, if you will.

 "It was instant love. It was the type of love that hits you so hard that you (say to yourself) how have I gone my whole life without this being a part of it?"

After the class, Geldert invited him to come out to 3rd Street Beat for more training. Within a year, Atienza was teaching.

Five years after first taking a dance class as an athlete, he was moving to Vancouver as an artist, aiming to become a full-time dancer/choreographer.

"I definitely felt a huge shift in all aspects of my life, professional and personal," said Atienza, who also came out in 2010. "But I knew that as soon as I got to Vancouver it was going to be a fresh start. I really had nothing holding me back. I was going in being completely and genuinely myself and that was something I didn't want to take for granted."

It didn't take him long to develop a strong reputation; just six months after moving to the West Coast, he formed a competitive dance troupe – The Faculty – which would go on to produce groundbreaking results for the Canadian competitive dance scene.

Not long after moving to Vancouver in 2010, Carlo Atienza. right, founded The Faculty - a hip-hop dance crew that became the first Canadian troupe to compete at the prestigious Body Rock competition (often called the Super Bowl of hip hop dance) in San Diego.

"For the first six months to a year (in Vancouver), I was putting the feelers out and didn't know where my place was," he said. "When I started The Faculty, that gave me a platform that I would have never dreamed of. I was able to travel the world and compete on international stages that I had only seen on YouTube."

Initially formed as a one-off to compete in Edmonton's Artists Emerge 2011 competition, The Faculty won that event and kept rolling. By the time they became the first Canadian dance team to be invited to the prestigious Body Rock competition in San Diego in 2013, they had won eight competitions in a row.

They placed third at Body Rock in 2013, second in 2014 and disbanded in 2015. But Atienza's reputation of excellence was cemented.

"After I was able to get to those stages, my name started to get out and that's how I was able to develop my own brand, my identity, reputation, clientele and my portfolio," he explained. "All of that stemmed from The Faculty. It was a pretty intense snowball effect.

"But that's just how it all started at MacEwan – just taking that one class and it snowballed quickly. The same thing happened when I came to Vancouver. I dove into the deep end and went for it."

Invited to become a director with Vancouver-based TwoFourSeven Company, where he still is to this day, Atienza prepared a team for the 2017 Body Rock competition and won.

"That was by far the biggest competition win I've had in my career," said Atienza. "The idea of winning that competition was never something I even considered.

"As much I wanted to strive for it … the reality of it is taking first place in a world-calibre competition like that is not the most possible thing in the world, so when it did happen in 2017, it was mind blowing.

"Tears. Tears everywhere."

Carlo Atienza and the Vancouver-based TwoFourSeven Company celebrate a victory at Body Rock in 2017.

By 2018, his profile was soaring. America's Got Talent scouted TwoFourSeven for Season 13 and Atienza worked as a choreographer for Jennifer Lopez's World of Dance, Season 2.

"Filming those two back to back was quite a strenuous experience to say the least," said Atienza. "It was the first time I had experienced reality TV. It's obviously very eye-opening. There are a lot of things you don't consider just watching it.

"After taking part in those two shows, I was grateful because they did give me a lot of exposure, but I also needed to reconnect with why I fell in love with dance back at MacEwan."

Carlo Atienza (front row, fourth from right) and TwoFourSeven Company appeared on America's Got Talent in 2018.

That's why he created, directed and produced his own show in 2018. His production 'Sonder' sold out in Vancouver amid sparkling critical acclaim and standing ovations.

"It was a magical time," said Atienza. "At that point of my career, I had already been accomplishing a lot of my goals, but this was the one that was more personal. It wasn't so much a business goal or professional, it was a goal for my soul.

"That feeling I described when I took my first dance class at MacEwan, it was a feeling of 'real love.' For me to create that show and sitting back in the booth watching it and seeing the crowd react, that's real love."

Carlo Atienza's own show Sonder debuted in Vancouver to critical acclaim and standing ovations in 2018.

The onset of the pandemic has forced the artistic world to take a step back and reinvent itself. Atienza noted his next project with TwoFourSeven Company will push the envelope.

"I'm actually working on a digital show with my company TwoFourSeven, which we're very excited to put out later this year," he said. "We're tackling some mediums we've never tackled before, but we're excited to hopefully break the mould and show something new."

With lockdowns of various stages limiting his work mostly to Vancouver, he has also had more time on his hands to rediscover an old passion. In 2020, he started playing beach volleyball again after a 10-year hiatus from the game.

"I was always so hesitant (to play)," said Atienza, who explained when he was younger he didn't want to risk his dance career by playing volleyball because of a previously dislocated shoulder. "Luckily, knock on wood, I didn't injure anything and I loved it. All those moments and even the terminology just came back like it was instinct. It was so crazy."

His memories of the game also remain succinct.

When Atienza was in Grade 6, he played for Bishop Savaryn against current Griffins coach Brad Poplawski, who was on a team from St. Vladimir.

"There was definitely a rivalry between those two schools," he said. "Anytime we came together it was just the biggest deal. I always remember seeing Brad and he had the most slicked back, greased-up hair – just fully looked like any villain in a Disney movie of the opposing team. That's how I saw him. I just fully played into that and it was so funny.

"Getting to know him obviously when we were older and dismantling that façade I built up is so funny. We became such good friends that we're still in contact now, which is awesome."

They played together in high school together at Archbishop MacDonald and were also teammates on the Griffins in 2004-05, his second season at MacEwan.

Carlo Atienza (#9) played libero for the Griffins men's volleyball team in 2004-05 when they won an ACAC silver medal. His teammate and current Griffins men's volleyball coach Brad Poplawski is pictured back left between #2 and #12.

Sky had moved on to coach at Mount Royal University (where he remains to this day), and the Griffins came up against them in the ACAC quarter-finals.

MacEwan won an epic battle in five games, en route to an ACAC silver medal and fifth-place finish at CCAA nationals, but Atienza remembers the mental hurdle he and his teammates needed to get past facing Sky.

"It was dramatic in that Shawn knew all of us," he said. "I remember being in practices with Shawn and him going over what we needed to work on, (saying) 'if I was ever on a team playing against you, this is exactly what I would do.'

"Playing against him, that's all I heard in my head – 'he's going to use this against me, he's going to use that against me.' So, it was us trying to counter that and capitalize on whatever growth we had over that year. It was a tough game to play and it went to five sets and was a nail-biter.

"It was probably one of the biggest wins of my career personally just because of so many demons I had to overcome."

In MacEwan's Arts program at the time, Atienza transferred to the University of Alberta to finish a film and media degree.

Carlo Atienza enjoyed two years with the Griffins men's volleyball team from 2003-05, calling them truly transformative years of his life.

He was no longer a volleyball player, though, fully now in pursuit of an artistic vision as a dancer that came about in one moment of destiny at MacEwan.

"I would love to end it off by saying I'm so grateful for those two years at MacEwan because in so many ways academically, professionally and personally, it just created this version of myself that I can say I'm so proud of now," he said.

"When people say high school was the best time of your life? No way, man. Those two years at MacEwan were the best years of my life because it was something about being on the Griffins. You felt like you belonged to something great.

"To have that at that point of your life when you're on the precipice of figuring out who you are, that was really important in my upbringing and developing into the person that I am."