Live works created by Vanessa Agle Isaac across stage and site.

Palace

A live performance collaboration with two-time Grammy winner Ted Nash, commissioned by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art — 2025.

Palace was created in response to the exhibition Modern Life: A Global Artworld, 1850–1950. Developed for live performance, the work engages music and movement as a dialogue with modern art, drawing inspiration from artists including Pierre Bonnard, Wifredo Lam, and Georgia O’Keeffe.

Bach and Bachianas

A choreographic work created by Vanessa Agle Isaac, commissioned for presentation by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in collaboration with the Santa Barbara Symphony, inspired by the music of Heitor Villa-Lobos and Johann Sebastian Bach— 2024

Created for live performance, the choreography responds to musical structure, phrasing, and contrast, translating these compositional elements into movement.

Passagens

Created for Fête de la Danse, commissioned by Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, performed in Monaco, with music direction by Marcus Santos and an international cast of musicians and dancers — 2023

Context: In Portuguese, passagem refers to a passageway or bridge, a corridor that connects one place to another while remaining open in both directions. The work draws on this idea as a structural principle, framing choreography as movement between past and future, origin and projection.

Commissioned by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
An exploration of memory, longing, and musical structure through embodied form — 2017.

Hip Brazil

A long-running community-based performance project exploring collective movement, Brazilian rhythms, and intercultural exchange — ongoing (initiated 2000)

Support: Our works were made possible through the generosity of Starr Siegele, who established a fund at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art to support dance as part of the Museum’s programming. Additional artist support was provided by Starr Siegele, and Larry Feinberg.