Dancers View – An Interview with Isabella Torres

Dancers View

An insight into the life of New York and Tokyo based ballet dancer and teacher, Isabella Maria Torres. We interviewed Isabella after she created her own product review video of Freed and Chacott items. Isabella has been a loyal friend and customer for a long time, so we thought we would get to know a little more about her and her dancer career…

Pictured: Dancer, Isabella Maria Torres

How Long have you been dancing?

I’ve been dancing since I was 3 years old. Dance has been a part of my life since then for 25 years. My first performance was the nutcracker as one of the angels.

What made you decide to become a dance teacher?

It was when my mentor told me that teaching others can be a big foundation as a dancer and that’s what made me decide to become a teacher. Since I loved helping my friends to solve their problems and was interested in becoming a teacher, it was natural for me to become a teacher, but that was the specific moment I determined myself to be a teacher. Even though I knew myself that I would love teaching, being a teacher was much harder than what I thought and it definitely took me a lot to build my own teaching style and technique.

Moving to a new city is a big change, tell us a bit about the challenges you’ve faced if any and the things you enjoy about New York.

As you imagine, moving to New York to build another life and career is one of the biggest challenges I’ve ever faced to, but for now, I’ve been really enjoying each and every moment here in New York since my first day. I may possibly meet people who have different perspectives than me and it can sometime be hard to accept those; however as an artist, it is quite important to be open – minded for brand new things and people. New York is a place where many talented artists live and inspire each other and being surrounded by those talented people would make my life so different. I’m extremely excited to meet people out there after quarantine is over.

Dancing is a demanding job, how do you manage to keep motivated?

It is quite important for me to take my daily class to keep motivated myself and maintain enough stamina to run a show for hours. Even after taking just 2 days off, I can tell how much my body feels and looks different and has lost its lightness. And also, to keep taking my daily class is one of the ways to be recognised by other dancers. In my opinion, dancers should always put some efforts to get involved in a dance community. If you have ever once thought that you don’t constantly want to go and take class, it could unfortunately be hard to have a successful career as a dancer.

What activities do you take part in outside of ballet that helps you with your dancing?

As many dancers take Pilates. I do the same to maintain by body condition well. Being a ballet dancer requires me both keeping my body in good shape and having enough stamina much as athletes. Pilates can give us low impact at some specific areas of our bodies to increase our muscle strength and won’t give too much muscle exercises to us like weight training. Since I began having Pilates class as my body conditioning routine, my core muscle has become stronger and I feel less tired than ever before after I’m done with my performance.

What’s your favourite style of ballet to perform or watch?

I love the style of Romantic ballet such as its symbolic work ‘Giselle’ with its iconic costume Romantic Tutu

Romantic ballet has no extra movements and I think the simplest is the most sophisticated and beautiful form of all ballet styles.

As a dancer, Romantic style is a must-study style and its is challenging for all dancers to study perfection of its forms. But at the same time, it may be an honour for all dancers to study and perform it on stage.

And also, each Romantic ballet work has an unrealistic but beautiful pure love story and I really enjoy its story line every time I see it as an audience.

Who is your favourite choreographer at the moment and why?

I admire Keith MacMillan. His choreography work has a perfect mixture of a classical movement and his own element of especially, in Romeo and Juliet, his dynamic movement perfectly works to visualise characters individuals and a story line and that naturally makes me feel like I’m actually in a story with characters.

If you could give a piece of advice to your younger self before you began your ballet career, what would it be?

I would say to my younger self that I should have realised that self-expression skill was a basic need as a dancer as much as physical strength and tried to show what I has inside to others. When I began my professional career. I didn’t quite recognise that a dancer had to act as a character just like an actor then was more likely just dancing choreography that was given by choreographers. And it sometimes felt like I wasn’t able to catch the audience’s eyrs because I didn’t quite express anything as a character. Even when dancers are not at a studio and stage, we shouldn’t hesitate to express ourselves and should always think that what you want to tell the audience through your movements.

What Freed shoe do you wear?

Elasticated split sole ballet shoe

What is your favourite Freed/Chacott product and why?

Silentshot Sauna Pants

I love these sauna pants a lot because these can really help me warm up my body quickly and sweat out a lot in dance class. I can feel my body become lighter after taking class wearing these pants. I usually wear them warming up in class, but you can definitely wear them for the entire class. These pants are flexible enough that I can do some big movements like Grand Batteman and Grand Jump and never make noise like ever before. And also these can look great with any leotards and are simply perfect for me!!

Watch Isabella’s Video HERE