Isabella Qureshi

Some Lesser Known Facts About Isabella Qureshi

• Isabella Qureshi grew up in Marin County, California.

• She started Ballet dance and movement classes when she was 3 years old.

• Once during a media conversation, Isabella Qureshi shared that her early inspirations were her mother, Antonia Minnecola, Ballet instructor, Jody White, and Michael Jackson.

• When she was eight years old, she began professional training in Ballet, Modern, and Jazz dance forms. She began attending classes five or six days a week.

• When Isabella Qureshi was 12 years old, she began performing in theatre shows.

• In her first stage performance, she played a character in the play the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. According to her, her face was painted white, but in the middle of the show, her makeup melted.

• During her college days, Isabella Qureshi received knowledge of various modern dance techniques.

• After completing her formal education at the Manhattan School of Music in New York, she began her career by choreographing high school musicals like Oliver! and Into The Woods.

• In December 2008, Isabella Qureshi was appointed as a choreographer at YES Theatre in Sudbury, Canada.

• In June 2010, she began working as a company dancer at Carmen Carnes Dance Ensemble, a theatre company in San Francisco. She worked in the position till December 2012.

• Isabella Qureshi worked as a dance instructor and choreographer at RoCo Dance and Fitness in California from February 2010 to October 2014.

• In January 2011, she began working as a company dancer at Salsa Vale Todo, a Cuban dance company in San Francisco and also became its member.

• Isabella Qureshi was appointed as a program manager at DanceVersity World Dance for Youth in Berkeley, California, in March 2011. She served in the position till January 2016.

• She is trained in Cuban Salsa dance form.

  

• She has travelled to Cuba many times to study Cuban dance and music.

• In June 2012, Isabella Qureshi began working as a dance instructor at Marin Ballet. She served in the position till February 2016.

• In 2014, her choreography was featured on the television series Scorpion, which aired on ABC.

• In March 2015, Isabella Qureshi started working as a Ballet teacher and choreographer at Stapleton School of the Performing Arts in San Anselmo, California. In August 2022, she was promoted to the position of director of the theatre division in the same organisation.

• She often organises dance workshops in America and India. She once explained that her workshops focused on teaching the evolution of many dance forms, key choreographers and dancers, and the techniques used in each style.

  

• In 2015, Isabella Qureshi organised dance workshops on Ballet dance techniques, contemporary dance, and Jazz dance at the Arts in Motion dance studio in Sion, Mumbai.

• The workshop focused on teaching the rise of contemporary dance from the 1930s onward. It covered topics such as Modern dance, Jazz, Hip-Hop, American television, and Silver Screen dance.

• Isabella Qureshi joined Marin Theatre Company, a non-profit organisation in California, United States, as an Arts educator in February 2016.

• From February 2018 to June 2019, she served as a Jazz and contemporary dance instructor at the Performing Arts Academy of Marin.

• In October 2018, Isabella Qureshi began working as a dance instructor at Miss Tilly’s Ballet & Theater Arts in San Francisco, California.

• In September 2019, she was appointed as a dance instructor at Geary Dance Centre in San Francisco, California.

• After that, Isabella Qureshi began working as a program manager for a multicultural dance program in San Francisco.

• During a media conversation, her father, Zakir Hussain, once mentioned that she often accompanied him to various concerts.

  

• Isabella Qureshi regularly holds dance workshops for children at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in Mumbai, India.

• At NCPA, she teaches 40 students, aged between 8 to 12, about the History and Development of Western Dance in America.

• Isabella Qureshi once shared during a media conversation that choosing dance as a career was easy because it felt natural to her. As a child, she would accompany her mother to dance classes and often disturb her by trying to imitate her.

• She said that she started with modern dance and discussed how Bharatanatyam and Jazz forms of dance influenced it.