Gisella-Guadalupe Páez

Her work begins with a stream of editing, cutting, reinventing and readjusting to be forever in the fundamentally forward. With this (even in what's forgotten) comes no getting rid of, only changing form. 

Gisella is a New York City based artist with a background in dance performance.

She graduated with a BFA from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia where she performed works by Jennifer Nugent, Sidra Bell, Jesse Zaritt, Doug Varone, and Merce Cunningham among others.

In the fall of 2018 Gisella performed “1973 A Collective Dance” by Boris Charmatz at The Barnes Foundation as a part of “Philadelphia Museum of Dance” co-curated by Simon Dove, Manfred Fischbeck, Miriam Giguere, and Lois Welk.

Gisella had the pleasure of working with Susannah Yugler at The University of Pennsylvania as an original cast member in the creation of "The Company" which was premiered in March of 2023 at Atelier Exhibition Space in Philadelphia as a part of "Away from Center" curated by Tiona Nekkia McClodden. 

She recently graduated from the Boston Dance Theater Trainee Program in August 2026, where she trained daily with the main company, understudied the repertoire, was an original cast member in new works by Daniel Navarro Lorenzo, Chloe Crenshaw, and Sofia Camacho, and performed repertoire by Itzik Galili and Micaela Taylor. While at BDT Gisella had the opportunity to collaborate in creative process with artistic director and founder Jessie Jeanne Stinnett and senior core member Henoch Spinola on an original solo that she looks forward to continuing to perform in the near future.

Alongside her performance career, Gisella has built a parallel practice in fitness instruction and somatic research. She is a certified mat pilates instructor and she spent several years as a senior coach for [solidcore], where she contributed significantly to the early growth of the Philadelphia market before relocating to Boston, where she helped expand the Massachusetts market from four to nine studios.

After her time at [solidcore], Gisella worked in close mentorship with Jessie-Jeanne Stinnett to propose, develop, and launch a movement methodology class for Boston Dance Theater's company members and trainees. Through Boston Dance Theater's Partnership with The Mosesian Center for the Arts (Watertown, MA) the initiative grew into a public facing weekly series, "Full Body Practice". She built a curriculum of her background in fitness, dance, creative inquiry, and education into a coherent pedagogical approach. While developing and teaching this class she designed a tailored marketing package including copywriting, webpages, media assets, Instagram posts and story captions, text/email outreach, and more to align with the mission and values of BDT, MCA and personal artistic identity.

What was started at MCA investigates how embodied sensation can become multidisciplinary artistic output.

"We use exhausting the structure of class to take us through transformation, lineage, and the spaces between inherited practice and development."

Gisella looks forward to continuing this work in New York City beginning with the MOtiVE for the artists residency which will allow her to weave accessibility directly into her work by extending beyond traditional, form-focused dance training spaces and isolated fitness modalities that lack artistic integration into an evolved framework for thinking, making, and doing. We don't know who work can save and we don't know whose work can save the world if we never work to make it. The grandiose dream is to have a pedagogical framework that can be  shared in psychiatric hospitals and addiction treatment centers. For now, Gisella is focused on independent research studies but looks forward to soon inviting the public to join her in open studio studies as the goal on the horizon is to get as many involved as possible to test the framework and make as many artifacts to keep choreographing curations that can feed back into this work. The residency directly supports her mission to build an inquiry based practice that generates new work and ways of working through engagement.

She also continues to perform, Gisella most recently had the incredible honor of being one of 100+ Dancers in "Table of Silence", a tribute and prayer for peace conceived by Choreographer Jacqulyn Buglisi on September 11, 2026 on the Josie Robertson Plaza at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, NYC.

She was born in Montgomery County, Maryland and feels incredibly lucky to have landed at The American Dance Festival for a summer at the age of 15. Her first night at ADF, there were 10 seconds where she had never felt calm like that before. The entire opera house blared with bones vibrating from 20 steel tables rushing forward at full speed. It was William Forsythe's "One Flat Thing Reproduced". This taught Gisella about the power of dance and craving and climax. This was her introduction to contemporary dance. ADF led Gisella to later spend summers studying with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, Batsheva Dance Company (GagaLabs), Sidra Bell Dance New York(MODULE), GALLIM, and MICHIYAYA dance. Gisella was able to attend many of these programs on generous scholarships or through work exchange programs.

"I owe my life to my teachers".