Overview
Isabel Padilla Carlo (she/her/ella) is a dance scholar pursuing a Ph.D. in Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University. Her research interests lie at the intersection of performance and critical dance studies, particularly examining how crisis—understood in Puerto Rico not only as economic, but also environmental, migratory, and identificatory—is metabolized, interrogated, and contested through the performing body. Her sites of inquiry travel across the archipelago and the diaspora, inhabit proscenium stages as well as street protests, and move from the personal to the political. Her latest work will appear in the forthcoming anthology Porque Estamos Aquí: Rican Feminisms In and Against Empire, featuring her essay “Léeme la cuerpa: Queer Laziness and the Body Politics of El perreo combative” and a series of interviews with Karla Claudio-Betancourt and DJ Perra Mística.
In Spring of 2025, Isabel organized a two-day colloquium with leading figures in experimental dance in Puerto Rico, Merián Soto and Viveca Vázquez, which included a screening of ¡Fenomenal Rompeforma! 1989–1996, a Q&A session with Soto and Vázquez, and a Movement and Creation workshop. As of Fall of 2024, Isabel serves as the Graduate Representative for the Dance Studies Association (DSA) and a Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS) Fellow, fostering interdisciplinary dialogue about dance and performance at Cornell and beyond. Isabel’s endeavors have been supported by the Cornell Council for the Arts (CCA), the Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS) program, and the Performing and Media Arts Presentation Series (PMAPS).
In Spring of 2024, Isabel won the 2024 Marvin Carlson Award for Best Student Essay for Theatre or Performance essay titled “Si Tu No Sabe Kokobalé” and The Reclamation of Collective Memory as a Praxis of Liberation. Isabel presented her award-winning essay on kokobalé at Northwestern’s Performance Studies Graduate Conference, The Aesthetics of Race and participated in Northwestern’s 2024 Performance Studies Summer Institute, Performance in the Interstices of Radical Thought. Isabel also worked with NAKA Dance Theater and Dr. Juan Manuel Aldape Muñoz as the production assistant for Y Basta Ya! Nueva York, a performance and community outreach project. She also performed solo and collaborative work in This table has been a house in the rain, as part of the Choreographing Justice series, curated by Juan Manuel Aldape Muñoz and Danielle Russo.
Before commencing her graduate studies at Cornell, Isabel earned a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature with a minor in Writing and Communications at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez (UPRM). During her undergraduate career, Isabel formed part of the Ballet Escenario dance company, served as a chief editor for Sábanas Bilingual Literary Magazine, and managed the UPRM English Department’s website. Isabel also participated in the Michigan Humanities Emerging Research Scholars Program (MICHHERS) in 2022 and The Library of Congress Internships Program (LOCI) in 2021.
In the news
- PMAPS Celebrates Dance with Movement Workshop and Film Screening
- PMA Graduate Student Isabel Padilla Carlo Selected to be a Graduate Student Representative for the Dance Studies Association and Selected for Northwestern Institute
- PMA Graduate Student Isabel Padilla Carlo to Present at Northwestern University
- PMA Graduate Student Isabel Padilla Carlo Wins 2024 Marvin Carlson Award
- 'A place at the table': Exploring free expression through dance
- PMA Graduate Student Isabel Padilla Carlo Selected to be a Latin American and Caribbean Studies Fellow