Fiorella grew up loving dance since she was a little girl. She describes dance and music as part of her culture. The first dance styles she learned were traditional Peruvian dance, basic lessons in ballet, then salsa, latin & ballroom and commercial dance.
“Dance is something that has always been part of my life,” she said.
Fiorella studied journalism in university and visited Qatar to be with her now husband. In Qatar, she was offered a magazine internship and she lived there for 12 years. It was always her dream to open a studio. In Qatar, the performing arts and dance scene is still developing so she created Brava studio in Doha.
“It was really important for me also as someone who wanted to keep growing and learning as a dancer, I always felt like why do I need to travel out of the country to keep learning. If I feel this way, I’m sure there are other people who live here who feel that way too. So why not create something and that’s kind of how it was born,” she said.
Brava Dance Studio offers a variety of dance classes such as ballet, jazz, contemporary, latin ballroom, hip hop, commercial dance, heels and aerial arts.
Through the process of owning a dance studio she learned it’s much harder than you think it is. She describes it as a forever learning process,challenging yet rewarding. She finds it beautiful to have developed a community.
“In a way, me making this dance studio was also a way to push myself to get out of my comfort zones. Being the head of a studio you have to do public speaking, it’s very much a client facing business so it’s made me grow personally… but also what I find beautiful about it is that it's opened up this whole community,” she said.
During the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, Fiorella was contacted by a production company to create choreography for the Dreamers World Cup song performed by BTS’ Jungkook. Initially, everything was very secretive due to Jungkook’s popularity.
She choreographed it with her colleague Carla. Both being from different backgrounds Carla is French Lebanese and Fiorella is Peruvian. They incorporated middle eastern steps from different dances, commercial dance steps, and afro steps.
“We wanted to blend our styles, her style is more jazz technique, and I have more of a partner dancing background so we wanted to combine different aspects not just of our styles but also of our backgrounds. We wanted to make a cultural blend because the World Cup is all these countries coming together. It’s quite an international event,” she said.
Working with global superstar Jungkook, Fiorella notes that he was very professional and wanted to execute the dance steps properly. He also took the time to greet all the dancers and staff on set
“He was very thankful and he really is very humble. It's nice to see that because a lot of people who have a lot of fame aren’t necessarily humble,” she said.
She recalls the first day of filming the official music video people found out where they were filming. It became complete chaos because so many fans rushed to the open market.
“We had to improvise very quickly and teach him the dance on set the first day. He’s such a good dancer we weren’t concerned that he wasn’t going to be able to pick it up,” she said.
Fiorella also appreciated that Jungkook was game for any ideas they were throwing at him such as lifts.
She was grateful for the opportunity to choreograph and film the music video with local dancers from Doha.
“I never really imagined that for myself coming from my background starting late in dance I just felt gratitude honestly to be in that position and I wanted to do the very best that we possibly could to represent so it was a very proud moment for me,” she said.
After the Dreamers performance and music video aired, she received a lot of supportive messages from BTS’ fan Army and people from her home country of Peru. Fiorella was proud to represent for Peru in her own way being part of the choreography and behind the scenes.
Her advice for dancers is that it’s never too late and she encourages anybody that has a passion for it or an interest to take dance classes.
“ I usually recommend for people to try different styles, not necessarily to just stick to one because now it’s important to have that diversity and versatility in your movement. Do it because you love it and not worry about what other people think,” she said.
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