Isabel Cuesta was born in Bogotá, Colombia at 2655 meter above sea level, a great-grand-daughter of a woman from the Colombian Uitoto tribe. She has been a nomad since she moved to Europe on her own at age 17.  For two years she studied Medicine at the Goethe University of Frankfurt before starting her dance training in London.

In her choreography Isabel Cuesta expresses a fusion of the sensorial reality and a “magical reality” that for her is simply the way in which her indigenous ancestors used to see the cosmos: the “marvellous real” world that surrounded them in landscapes of infinite profound shapes and sounds and invisible forces, energies emanating from those landscapes.

The texture of magic and poetry in her work comes from the layers of meaning implicit in the movement: a world of emotions and images, space is interiorised and has symbolic character, astral and physical planes, fantastic elements that are intuitively “logical”.

As a freelance choreographer she has worked in Germany, The Netherlands and Colombia. She has a Master Degree in Choreography from the Dance Unlimited Program of ArtEZ Arnhem, The Netherlands.

Isabel is founder and director of TANZLANDSCHAFT SUR, a network of South American contemporary dance artists and institutions. This network started in 2009 with TANZLANDSCHAFT KOLUMBIEN, presenting the artistic work of Colombian choreographers in Germany and The Netherlands.

In Winter 2010 she founded the company ANNIMAL DANS, for the artistic collaboration, research and production of artistic projects focusing on the body in movement within the context of today’s society dramatically marked by virtual realities in which the body seems to disappear to become virtual subject and object.

As a docent she has taught for the BA Programs in Dance of the Faculty of Arts ASAB in Bogotá Colombia, the BA in Dance of UNEARTES Caracas, Venezuela and as Mentor for the Master in Choreography Dance Unlimited of ArtEZ Arnhem, The Netherlands.

Since 2011 she teaches professional dancers at various dance institutions in The Netherlands like Danshuis Station Zuid and Dansateliers Rotterdam.