Luis Salgado has been a part of two of the biggest milestone moments of Broadway. First, he was part of the original Broadway cast of In The Heights, the Tony-winning musical that not only marked Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway debut, but an entirely new type of storytelling and a fresh story about people we rarely see onstage; second, he was part of the largest cast of Latinx performers ever to be on a Broadway stage in On Your Feet!.
A performer, director, choreographer, producer, and humanitarian, Salgado paved the first stone on his path when he was just 17—when he decided to leave his native Puerto Rico for New York City. “I had been dancing around the world with an artist and doing theatre and doing TV. I had gathered the experience I could in Puerto Rico. I knew that it was time for me to learn from new heroes,” Salgado tells Playbill from the Cadillac Lounge in the video above.
Salgado has put in the work from Day One, studying Stanislavsky, the Meisner method, Suzuki, and training at Broadway Dance Center. He brings that artistry to ¡Viva Broadway! Hear Our Voices as the concert's associate director, co-choreographer, and a performer, reuniting with the original In The Heights and On Your Feet! casts. “I am honored even in this very same event, Viva Broadway, to be able to be holding hands with the master, Sergio Trujillo,” says Salgado.
And though he matured in the theatre community under Tony-winning mentors Andy Blankenbuehler, Trujillo, and Jerry Mitchell, Salgado is now a mentor through his R.Evolución Latina (an organization that activates individual and collective human growth through artistic experiences for transformation and social change) and a model simply through the example of his career as a performer, director, and choreographer working around the world—even with Cirque du Soleil.
But Salgado’s engine still revs for more: “The next place that for me to feel fulfilled is that we no longer, as Latinos, have to only tell Latino stories, right? And that as we look at the Latinx community, as we look at what we are as human beings, that we are able to tell any story and be seen for the artistry that we possess, the things we have to share humanly.”
Watch Salgado and over 60 other Latinx stars of stage and screen in Playbill and The Broadway League’s ¡Viva Broadway! Hear Our Voices, sponsored by Cadillac. The star-studded concert event is a benefit performance for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and Broadway Bridges. Tune in to the premiere October 1 8PM ET at Playbill.com/Viva.
