Life & Work with Isis Avalos-Perez of North Hollywood/Los Angeles

Today we’d like to introduce you to Isis Avalos-Perez.

Hi Isis, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I am a Mother, Mexican American dance artist, choreographer, educator, and cultural worker. I grew up on the South Texas border in Brownsville, where dance first entered my life through cumbias, norteño, and banda—music that shaped my earliest relationship to movement. Alongside these cultural rhythms, I trained in local studios, experiences I credit deeply to the Ballerina School of Dance and Brownsville Dance Center. From a young age, I held leadership roles in school dance programs, which ultimately led me to pursue dance academically. I earned my BFA in Dance from the University of North Texas in 2012, and that same year relocated to Los Angeles with the goal of dancing professionally.

During my final two years of college, I was a company dancer with José Zamora’s CholoRock Dance Collective, a modern dance and dance-theater company that centers Mexican American experiences. That time proved foundational to my artistic development. Through CholoRock, I witnessed what it looked like to celebrate Mexican American identity—folklórico, electrocumbias, norteño—while integrating Euro-centered dance training in modern, post-modern, contemporary, and jazz forms. It was my first experience crossing borders through movement and dancing in community. I didn’t know spaces like this existed, and I remain deeply grateful to José Zamora for creating and sustaining that world.

In 2013, I joined CONTRA-TIEMPO as a touring performing and teaching artist, an experience that profoundly shaped my growth as both an educator and arts activist. Over six years with the company, I trained extensively in Afro-Latin diasporic dances while continuing to explore my own relationship to identity, politics, and movement. My work there reflected the migrations within my body—modern release technique, Latin social dance, house dance, and my lived experience as an immigrant, morena woman raised on the border. Within my first year, I traveled throughout South America as part of DanceMotion USA, a U.S. State Department–funded cultural exchange program promoting American contemporary dance abroad. I also taught at universities across the United States, where I began to more clearly develop my own voice in movement, pedagogy, and advocacy.

From 2020 to 2021, I was a member of Dancing Diaspora Collective, founded by Marina Magalhães—an artist collective of people of color committed to movement as medicine and dance as a tool for change. Being in community with these poderosas reaffirmed my belief in the healing power of collective movement. After years of navigating life in my postpartum body and redefining what it meant to be a mother and a dancer, I launched aTRAVIESA Groove Sessions at Pieter Performance Space in 2024.

aTRAVIESA is a monthly, community-guided groove session designed for anyone seeking to reconnect with their body—free from judgment or expectations about “knowing how to dance.” The intention is simple: to remove pressure, honor the wisdom already present in our bodies, and celebrate the way music and movement migrate through us. Today, I continue to lead these sessions while also serving as an Adjunct Professor at Los Angeles Valley College, where I teach Latin Social and Salsa Dance.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
In 2020, after the birth of my first child, I found myself in a deep postpartum depression and had to close a chapter after years of dedication as a company dance artist. It was an incredibly dark time—one that led me to question everything, including whether I should leave dance altogether.

I went through a profound journey of self-identity, navigating postpartum depression and grappling with doubts about continuing dance as a career. For a long time, I had feared what it would look like to become a mother and still dance professionally. I had rarely seen dancers who were also mothers, so when I became one myself, that fear felt very real. All of my “dance wounds” rose to the surface. I had spent so much of my life training and building a career in dance that I had lost sight of its true essence.

The idea that I might need to “stop dancing” became a turning point. It made me realize that dance lives in our bodies—it never actually leaves us. The way it lives in me, in all of us, and especially within community, is what makes it so powerful and medicinal. I began researching dance and its many benefits for mental health, and slowly reconnected with who I was in this new mama body. Through that process, I found healing within my own postpartum journey.

I discovered that dancing on my own was healing, but moving in community was even more transformative. That realization led me to create something new. In 2024, I launched *aTRAVIESA*, a movement-for-all groove session at Pieter Performance Dance Space. This monthly gathering invites anyone who simply wants to dance—without pressure, without technique to master—into a space that celebrates exploration, presence, and reconnecting with our bodies on our own terms.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I’m most proud of the way I’ve been able to share dance in a way that affirms people from all walks of life. My lived experience of family separation through the immigration system has humbled me and sharpened my understanding of the power carried in music and movement—traditions that migrate within our bodies, untouched by man-made borders. Living in the in-between, my bi-national identity deeply shapes how I understand the need to cultivate spaces of protection and empowerment, especially in social conditions that often feel precarious.

Celebrating who we are—and celebrating culture—brings joy, and joy is a powerful vehicle for change. That belief has guided how I share dance as a vessel for healing and transformation. Dance inherently holds these qualities, and I feel fortunate to have spent decades learning this through my own practice and now to share it through community-guided movement sessions.

Any big plans?
I hope aTRAVIESA Groove Sessions continues to grow as a community. I’ve witnessed the shift that happens when people move together—the shared rhythm, the spontaneous applause, the smiles exchanged across the room. There’s something powerful in the simple act of syncing our movements. It carries real benefits, both physical and emotional. My hope is that it reaches more people who are looking to reconnect with their bodies through collective grooving. In times like these, that kind of connection isn’t just uplifting—it’s essential to our health and well-being.

Pricing:

• Sliding Scale
• No one while be turned away for lack of funds

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @isismoves
• Other: https://linktr.ee/isisavalos

Image Credits
Sean Bernard, Raquel Cabrera, Amy Tuley