Vanessa Isaac on womanhood, identity and health from a Brazilian Perspective

Vanessa Isaac by Viana Julia

Vanessa, can you please tell us a little bit about yourself; where you are from, your culture, and how you came to be so involved with dance? 

I was born in Brazil, and my early childhood was spent in Bahia, the Afro-Brazilian motherland. My mother and grandmother, with whom I shared a deep connection, are both from Bahia. This beautiful Afro-Brazilian land has been a profound source of inspiration for my art, work, and movement.

As a child, I took ballet and piano lessons. During my teenage and college years, I pursued my interests in theater, studying and performing. While in college, I also trained with various dance schools and groups, exploring diverse movement styles such as contemporary, jazz, classical ballet, Afro-Brazilian roots, samba, and capoeira (the Afro-Brazilian martial art).

I hold a B.A. in Journalism. My love for in-depth research as part of my creative process is, in part, influenced by my journalistic training. While studying journalism, I also took courses in art history and cinema.

After graduating, I moved to the United States and established roots in Santa Barbara, CA. In 1996, I began teaching dance at Dance Warehouse, a studio founded and directed by Julie McLeod. While teaching at private dance studios, I also started working with the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Extension Program. Mentoring many dance students from UCSB’s Dance and Theatre Department, I always encouraged dancers to explore diverse movement traditions alongside classical ballet.

At that time, I also co-founded Danza Alegria, my first dance company, with dancer Andriana Mitchell. Over the years, I have founded several dance and music companies and have taught and performed internationally. 

Currently, I am the Director and Choreographer of the Vanessa Isaac Dance Company, where I focus on contemporary dance and film. I continue to teach internationally too.  As an artist, I explore and incorporate various mediums, including dance, film, music, and writing, among others.

How has dance informed your relationship with your body and sense of identity as a woman? 

Dance has profoundly shaped my relationship with my body and my sense of identity as a woman. It has been a journey of reclaiming space: physically, emotionally, and creatively. Movement is a way to understand and express myself in ways that feel both empowering and deeply connected to something greater than myself. Dance has allowed me to honor the inherent strength and vulnerability that we women often carry, particularly within cultures that have historically sought to limit our voices and agency.

Through dance, I’ve tapped into the nuances of my history, weaving together my Brazilian roots with the broader cultural experiences that have shaped me. In doing so, I have discovered ways to celebrate my body in its full range of expressions. Through strength and fluidity, joy and sorrow, resilience and release.

Dance has been a tool for healing, a catalyst for community, and a platform to amplify my voice while creating space for other women to do the same.

Movement is more than physical. It holds emotion, intimacy, and self-awareness. Dance and sensuality have always been deeply intertwined as dance is an intimate dialogue between body and soul. Dance has taught me to embrace my body not just as a vessel, but as a living, breathing story. It has given me the power to claim my narrative and my place in the world. I always tell my dancers and students: Take up space!

Through movement, I continue to redefine what it means to be a woman in ways that are fluid, evolving, and deeply personal.

Inclusivity is a core value of yours. Can you tell us more about this, why it is so important to you and how you achieve it in a world that is highly polarised?

I believe in the power of diversity and the importance of fostering connections across cultures. For 28 years, my work has centered on artistic expression, healing through movement, inclusivity, intercultural exchange, and amplifying the voices of women and minority communities. All while honoring my latin Brazilian heritage.

To me, inclusivity means that everyone has a seat at the table. Imagine what a beautiful world that would be! This has been my approach from the very beginning. Every class I’ve taught, every dance company I’ve founded, has been rooted in inclusivity. I dance to express my ideas, vision and experiences but just as importantly, I dance to learn about yours. It is through this shared experience that we can create something greater together.

Yes, the world is deeply polarized, as you mentioned. But change begins with awareness and action, no matter where we are and what we do. It’s about showing up, doing our part, and using our voices to build a more connected and compassionate world.

Preserving the work of ancestral traditions, promoting Latin and minority artists is important work for you. Why is this work so important to you?

As a contemporary artist, I am always evolving. I believe we can be both visionary and on the edge, pushing boundaries, while still honoring our traditions. My work is deeply personal at times, yet it is part of a larger vision and community. Honoring traditions is important because they connect us to our roots, history, and culture. They carry the wisdom, stories, and values of our ancestors that helped shape who we are and how we see the world. Traditions also foster a sense of belonging and continuity, providing grounding in an ever-changing world.

For me, art is many things, and it is also a powerful tool for giving voice to communities that have been underrepresented, including myself as a Latina. Art allows us to share our stories, struggles, and triumphs. This is why I am committed to promote, celebrate and honor the richness of our cultural expressions and traditions.

What have you learnt through your exploration and elevation of Latin and in particular Brazilian Culture? 

I’ve learned a great deal about resilience, the strength of community, and the deep connection between culture, nature, and healing. 

Brazilian culture, especially the Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian traditions, carries an extraordinary wealth of wisdom. Preserving these traditions isn’t just about aesthetics; it’s about honoring the knowledge, practices, and ways of being passed down through generations. Elevating these cultural expressions means elevating ancestral wisdom, which can offer guidance for the challenges we face today.

In 2021, I choreographed, directed, and danced in a short dance film titled Alfazema. This work is inspired by our connection to our inner healer, our innate ability to heal ourselves, as well as the healing of the environment. With the ocean as a backdrop, the film explores the link between self-healing and the health of our habitat. For me it asks, Is it possible that we all have an inner healer? How is our inner healer connected to our surroundings and to nature itself? The inspiration for this piece comes from the Indigenous wisdom, which teaches us that we are not separate from nature; we are nature. To heal ourselves, we must respect and care for the natural world.

What is one element of Brazilian culture that you really connect with and want to share with others? 

One element of Brazilian culture that deeply resonates with me is the concept of joy as an integral part of life. Joy the way I see is not  just an emotion, it’s a way of being. This joy isn’t about constant happiness or avoiding hardship; it’s about embracing life fully, with all its ups and downs, and finding moments of brightness and connection in every circumstance.

In Brazilian culture, joy is often expressed through community, music and dance. What’s powerful about joy is that it’s something that’s shared, something that can connect us across differences. This collective joy is an act of resistance, of affirming life in the face of adversity, and it’s often embodied in community events like Carnival, where people come together to celebrate the resilience of the human spirit.

I believe joy is often underrated in many parts of the world. We tend to prioritize seriousness, and even pain or struggle as "legitimate" experiences. But joy is a vital resource that can heal, uplift, and bind us together. It’s not just about feeling good, it’s about creating environments where we can experience freedom, creativity, and mutual care. I want to share this with others because it’s a powerful tool for healing and a reminder that we don’t have to wait for “perfect” moments to experience joy. It can be part of our everyday lives, in the smallest interactions or the simplest pleasures. And I love the word pleasure. Yes, pleasure in life, in creating, creativity and in living.

When we embrace joy as a fundamental part of our well-being, we create spaces for deeper connection, especially in communities that may have been overlooked or marginalized. It’s a celebration of life’s richness, something that’s needed more than ever in a world that often asks us to bear burdens alone and silently.

Vanessa Isaac by Valerie Villa

There is never one narrative or one homogeneous group within any culture, while acknowledging this, broadly speaking, how do Brazilian women see and value themselves? What could we learn from Brazilian women? 

For me it’s essential to recognize that any attempt for us to generalize runs the risk of oversimplifying the complexities of women’s experiences, especially within a country as vast and diverse as Brazil. It’s important for me to avoid reducing women to a single, one-dimensional narrative, especially since our ways of navigating the world often intersect with many things, including social and cultural complexities. The richness of Brazilian women’s lives can’t be captured in easy stereotypes; there’s an immense variety of personal and collective stories that reveal our depth, strength, and beauty.

But to your point, if there’s one thing we could perhaps learn from Brazilian women, it might be our incredible resilience in the face of adversity. Our capacity to blend joy with struggle. There’s this unique ability to live fully in the moment, to find celebration and meaning even amidst hardship.

I’m curious, how do you and other women see the relationship between culture and self-worth among women in other parts of the world? I guess it’s a question worth asking, right?

How has dance supported you to process and move through some of your major life challenges? 

Dance has been a powerful tool for me, not just as a form of expression, but as a way to navigate some of life’s toughest moments. In challenging times, movement becomes a language that doesn’t need words. It helps me process emotions that might otherwise be too complex or overwhelming. Dance has helped me find clarity, connect with my body, and regain a sense of agency in difficult circumstances.

Dance can be deeply personal. When I was at a crossroads in my life, feeling torn between pursuing a new opportunity or staying in a familiar, but unfulfilling place. I found myself turning to dance as a way to clear my mind. I would create choreography with no clear intention, just to express the internal conflict I was feeling. As I moved, the tension in my body mirrored the confusion I had been carrying mentally. It was like my body was giving me answers before my mind could catch up. Through the process, I realized that the dance itself was teaching me about trust. Trusting that I could make the leap into the unknown and trusting that my instincts would guide me. By moving through the uncertainty, I found a sense of clarity and courage that I hadn’t expected. It was like the movement helped me process the decision before I even knew what I wanted.

I can give you many examples, but what dance has taught me more than anything is to trust and that there’s power in surrendering to the moment, even when life feels out of control. In that surrender, I’ve found clarity, healing, and sometimes even joy in places I didn’t expect. Dance has become a way for me to honor my emotions, my journey, and the process of moving forward in life.

Is dance political for you or an act of rebellion or defiance? A way of connecting with a part of you and a culture that isn’t as easy to access in the ‘modern’ world we find ourselves in?

I’ve always believed that everything we do carries some kind of political weight, even when it doesn’t feel like it. We are always participating in systems, whether through culture, community, or our own personal identity. But that doesn’t mean every piece I create is driven by a political message. Sometimes, I simply need to create from an emotional or personal place.

Many times, my contemporary work is a journey inward, a search for understanding who I am in each moment, how I evolve, and how my body can articulate the thoughts and emotions that swirl within me. It is my way of holding space for myself as a woman, an artist, and a human navigating this complex world, and then transcending it.

Last year, I choreographed and performed a show titled Bach and Bachianas, set to the compositions of Bach and Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. During the creative process, it became clear to me that I was exploring devotion and transcendence with the dancers.

Many of my pieces, though not all, have a Neptunian quality, sometimes evoking an ethereal, otherworldly atmosphere where the boundaries between reality and the divine blur. In this performance, the movements felt almost weightless, as if the dancers were suspended between earth and sky. Their lines elongated and softened, conveying a sense of openness and vulnerability, where one could almost float or drift through space. The connection to breath and the rhythm of the cosmos became central to my choreography. So, you see, my work can often be quite abstract.

I am also drawn to the idea of quiet rebellion. Sometimes, it is not about fighting the world externally but about breaking the constraints we place on ourselves. In this way, dance becomes a tool for personal liberation, both for me as an artist and for anyone who connects with the movement.

There are limitations to talk and behaviour therapy, to an individualised approach to healing and to modern medications. In light of these limitations, how do you find movement, creative self expression and community to benefit women wanting to experience deep healing or the release of trauma? 

I do not believe in one single path to healing, but I do believe in the body’s wisdom. And I have always believed in the power of movement as a path to healing. In my work, I see time and time again how dance, creative expression, and community create space for transformation. The body holds memories, emotions, and trauma, and movement allows those experiences to be processed and released without the need for words.

When we move we tap into something beyond logic and language. We give ourselves permission to express what may feel unspeakable. I've witnessed dancers reconnect with parts of themselves they thought were lost, rediscover joy, and reclaim their sense of self through movement. There is a liberation that happens when we step into our bodies fully, without judgment, and allow movement to guide us toward healing.

Community is another vital piece. Healing in isolation can be more difficult, and yet so many women are conditioned to carry their burdens alone. When we come together in dance, there is an unspoken understanding. We see each other, we hold space, we validate each other's experiences without needing explanations. There is an energy that builds in a shared space, a collective rhythm that reminds us we are not alone. The simple act of being witnessed in our movement can be profoundly healing.

And then there is creativity, another doorway to freedom. When we allow ourselves to create, we step outside rigid structures of thought and open up to new possibilities. Dance and music offer ways to transform pain into beauty, grief into art, struggle into strength. It shifts the narrative from one of suffering to one of resilience and agency.

And this is based on experience. After so many years as an educator, I have received countless letters and emails about the healing power of dance. After many of my workshops, women have shared how movement helped them release long-held pain, reconnect with their joy, and feel seen in ways they never had before. These messages continue to affirm what I have always known: dance is not just about movement, it is about healing, expression, and reclaiming the fullness of who we are.

What would you say to a woman aspiring to be her authentic self in a world that hasn’t celebrated her unique way of being thus far?

Embrace your uniqueness, even when the world doesn’t understand it or celebrate it in the way you deserve. Your authentic self is a gift, and it’s not about fitting into someone else’s mold or expectations. It’s about honoring your own path and trusting that who you are is enough.

Begin by truly getting to know who you are. Your values, passions, desires, and even your fears. 

Also take time to reflect and know that it's okay if this process unfolds over time. Sometimes the most authentic parts of us need space to emerge.  The path to your authentic self is not always easy. There will be moments of doubt, times when you wonder if it’s worth it to stand alone. But know this: authenticity isn’t about fitting in, it’s about belonging to yourself, deeply. 

When you honor that, you begin to carve out a space where others can see the strength in your vulnerability, the beauty in your truth, and the power in your voice. And remember: your authenticity is an offering, a gift not just to you, but to the collective.

Vanessa Agle Isaac is a performer, choreographer, dance educator, artist, filmmaker, producer, and writer. She is the artistic director and choreographer of the Vanessa Isaac Dance Company. In addition to her work with the company, she offers public classes through her online dance studio. To learn more, visit www.vidancecompany.com.