Isabella Franco, born in Los Angeles, CA, began dancing at the age of three at the Marat Daukayev School of Ballet. She attended summer intensives on a merit scholarship at the Academie Princess Grace in Monaco and San Francisco Ballet School. She also danced in the summer programs of the School of American Ballet and Ballet Austin. Isabella was a 2016 YoungArts Finalist in Dance and was a semifinalist for the 2018 Presidential Scholar in the Arts award. She consistently placed in the top three in the Youth America Grand Prix (YAGP) regional semifinals, earned the Junior Grand Prix award in Los Angeles and won 2nd place in the YAGP Finals in New York. She spent two years as a Butler Fellow at Ballet Austin. Isabella joined the first company of Charlotte Ballet in 2021. Her principal and featured roles at Charlotte Ballet include Odette/Odile in Ib Andersen’s Swan Lake, Aurora in Matthew Hart’s Sleeping Beauty: A Fairy Tailored Classic, Sugar Plum Fairy in Jean Pierre Bonnefoux’s The Nutcracker, Tinkerbell in Christopher Stuart’s Peter Pan, Rebecca West in Val Caniparoli’s Ibsen’s House, and Duet in Mthuthuzeli November’s From Africa with Love. Isabella has also performed in Jiří Kylián’s Petite Mort, Rena Butler’s Subliminal Tsunami, Ohad Naharin’s Kamuyot, Alejandro Cerrudo’s Silent Ghost, Helen Simoneau’s The Details are the Meaning, and Jennifer Archibald’s HDrM.
