Isabella Velasquez [Lake Forest, CA] grew up training in Orange County at the Maple Conservatory under the direction of Charles Maple. At 17, she was asked to be a trainee at The Washington Ballet in Washington D.C., where she trained for a year and performed with the company, her favorite work being Twyla Tharp’s Push Comes to Shove. She completed her dance studies at the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre Graduate Program before joining Sacramento Ballet in 2014. Isabella has had the opportunity to perform many leading and featured roles at Sacramento Ballet: Kitri in Don Quixote, Marie in Amy Seiwert’s The Nutcracker, the lead in George Balanchine’s Donizetti Variations and Tarantella, and Ophelia in Stephen Mills’ Hamlet. She has also greatly enjoyed working with choreographers Ma Cong, Septime Webre, Adam Hougland, Ron Cunningham, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Val Caniparoli, Jennifer Archibald, and Jodie Gates. This is her second year with NCI.