Junior pursues opportunities at Miami City Ballet, American Dance Festival

By Danna Bertel and Kayla McGee •

Ysabella Lupercio, junior dance and business major, started her dance career at the age of 3.

Since then, she’s gained experience in dance production and stage management, finding a passion for working backstage. As a dance major and the performance committee chair for Razor’s Edge Shark Talent program, she gets to practice what she loves.

“With the dance program, I have been starting to stage manage dance shows like the student choreography showcase,” Lupercio said. She equally credits the dance program and Shark Talent for pushing her “love and drive” for stage managing.

Lupercio is responsible for organizing and overseeing all performances Shark Talent executes, including the Shark Talent Showcase.

This semester, Lupercio is shadowing Miami City Ballet’s production stage manager Kelly Brown and assistant stage manager Lauren Wickett. She also secured a paid summer internship at the American Dance Festival in North Carolina.

“Shadowing for the Miami City Ballet has definitely been a great learning experience. To learn about how a professional show comes together from one of the biggest ballet companies has really put into perspective how everything I am learning at Nova really does apply to the real world. Kelly Brown has been patient in teaching and answering all the questions I have asked. I’m so excited for this experience to continue,” Lupercio said.

She is looking forward to gaining insight from both experiences.

“I think this will definitely open doors for me to find out more about what I want to do when it comes to dance. There’s commercial dance, company dance, and there’s Broadway. I think that these internships and these shadowing opportunities will help me figure out what is the route I want to go on and what I want my future to look like,” Lupercio said.

Elana Lanczi, associate professor of dance, in the Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts has been teaching Lupercio since she was a freshman. Lanczi recommended the American Dance Festival internship to Lupercio.

“I recommended it to a lot of students, but specifically for Ysabella because I knew she was interested in stage management and production and I know that ADF has a lot of scholarships and internships,” Lanczi said. “She is such a wonderful addition to our dance program. She’s been a choreographer, she has helped stage manage dance productions and also been a performer, so she’s taken on a lot of different roles during her time here.”

The American Dance Festival takes place at Duke University. Lupercio will get the opportunity to work on 18 different dance shows with choreographers at several dance companies.

Lanczi said this internship experience will have a great impact on Lupercio’s career.

“Top dance companies from all over the world come in and perform there, so she’s going to get, in a concentrated period of time, a couple of years’ worth of experience, or maybe a lifetime worth of experience,” Lanzi said. “It’s really an amazing opportunity that she has to work with all these different companies and under a production manager who’s really experienced and who’s been really well-respected in the dance world.”

Lupercio looks forward to a fruitful career in stage management and production and hopes to pass on her knowledge to younger dancers.

“A big end goal of mine is to help young dancers find what they want to do, as I’m in my process of finding what I want to do, and stage managing and working in production,” Lupercio said. “Eventually, I would like to open up my own company that helps young dancers find the path they want to take and give them resources to do so.”