How Isabella Avila followed her dance dreams from Texas to LSU

Dressed in white hammer pants, a black top and a hat over a white headscarf, Isabella “Bibi” Avila stood in line as the Tiger Girls were about to take the stage. The lights were bright, the room was packed and the crowd started chanting “LSU!” Avila said she almost fainted when the music to Ciara’s “Like a Boy” started playing.

The next time Avila danced this number, the Tiger Girls went viral and won the 2022 Universal Dance Association Dance Nationals in Orlando, Florida.

“I’ve never experienced anything like this,” Avila said. “That was definitely a core memory for me.”

Three UDA National Championships later, he took first place twice in hip-hop and third in jazz, and after cheering on the Tigers on the field countless times, Avila is now a senior at LSU. She said she almost didn’t apply to LSU in the first place.

Originally from Beaumont, Texas, Avila grew up watching LSU football games on television with her father. When she was in her senior year of high school, Avila said her dance teacher encouraged her to try out for the LSU dance team.

“I thought, ‘No.’ I just didn’t think I would even be able to do it. Like I didn’t think I’d be at this level.”

But her teacher’s insistence, the cheap application fees and the LSU signs began to change her mind.

“It’s very crazy to say this, but everywhere I went I saw a lot of LSU signs. I saw people wearing LSU shirts, LSU hats, or I was in the drive-thru and the car in front of me had an LSU license plate.”

Her mother had told Avila she could apply “anywhere within a four-hour radius.”

“If you want to try it, let’s try it,” Vanessa Melancon told her daughter. “Whatever God has.”

So Avila decided to give it a try.

“And that’s basically how I got here,” Avila said. “And now I’m almost ready!” Avila began dancing at the age of three when her mother invited her to dance classes with her older cousin at the City Dance Center in Beaumont, Texas.

“I hated it for the first few weeks. I would cry and throw up. I didn’t like it at all,” she said.

According to Melancon, Avila was a very shy child but always had a sense of rhythm.

“When she was really little, we noticed that she had a really good rhythm from all the little TV commercial songs that were on TV; She would move her body,” Melancon said.

Avila said she stopped taking dance classes for a while, but when she got back into it, she loved it. According to her mother, teachers began to notice how good she was and began to emphasize her.

“I think that’s when the light went on for her and she started to break out of her shyness,” Melancon said.

During high school, Avila attended Lancaster Dance Academy and was also part of the practice team at Westbrook High School.

“When I look back, I don’t even know how I kept to my schedule,” Avila said.

She went straight to the dance studio after school and sometimes stayed until 10 p.m. Some days she went to practice between school and dance practice.

“If I had to choose between having dinner with friends or working out to get better, I would definitely choose training. That’s crazy to say, but that’s what I love,” she said.

“She just has a big heart,” Melancon said. “She’s committed.”

Avila said the most important thing she had to figure out as a student-athlete at LSU was time management.

“Even though it’s finals week and dead week, we still have to go to the games; We still have to go and perform.”

Although the Tiger Girls have a week off training for finals week, their winter schedule remains hectic. They get to go home two days before Christmas and are then back to prepare for the UDA Nationals, which takes place in January.

“Any downtime I have, I’m constantly learning,” she said.

Avila’s first participation in a soccer game came during her freshman year, when she cheered on the Tigers on the field.

“It was just a crazy thought to be my first and be a part of it and it was just very rewarding,” she said.

The Tiger Girls meet every summer for summer camp training, where the choreographers teach them their new routines. In the summer of 2022, Avila said her coaches asked her to bring something unusual: heels.

“It was definitely something risky, and we knew it was risky,” Avila said of the 2023 UDA Nationals dance routine to Beyoncé’s “Crazy In Love.”

She said there were a lot of injuries this year as the Tiger Girls got used to dancing in high heels and had to do more exercises to strengthen their ankles.

The Tiger Girls’ second hip-hop win in three years came at the 2024 UDA Nationals after they performed their Michael Jackson routine “Smooth Criminal,” which Avila says is her favorite.

“It was so much fun to portray a character and it was so successful,” she said.

Avila said she and her team had to spend a lot of time learning “popping and locking” techniques based on hip-hop.

“It was so hard,” Avila said. “But it was really fun”

That year, the Tiger Girls also placed third in jazz, the first time the program had achieved this in 10 years. Avila said it almost felt like they took first place because LSU wasn’t considered a Jazz team.

“That was kind of our mission, to come and say, ‘Hey, we’re actually jazz dancers too, and we’re about to show you that,'” Avila said. “And it felt like we could finally show the world that we can do a hip-hop dance, but we’re also very technically trained.”

Avila is now a mass communications senior at LSU majoring in journalism. She said her stepmother worked in the news media, which inspired her to want to work in journalism one day.

“At some point I want to be able to be a voice for dancers, spirit groups and the like and give them the flowers they deserve,” she said.

Avila said there is room for more journalism about dance and cheer and she hopes to be a part of it once she retires from dancing.

But she said she isn’t done dancing yet and might dance for an NFL or NBA team. After retiring from dancing, she hopes to one day open her own dance studio.

When describing the Tiger Girls team, she referred to them as a family and pointed out that they love doing everything together.

“We are very close,” she said.

Her teammate and LSU freshman Tiger Girl Isabella Ferrara confirmed the same thing.

“She was such a genuine person who let me learn from her, and I have already learned so much from her,” Ferrara said. “Like she said, we’re such a big family.”

During her summer training, Ferrara was assigned Avila as her summer friend, and she said Avila constantly encouraged and motivated her to do her best.

“She’s the same way with the team,” Ferrara said. “That’s exactly the culture we create at Tiger Girls. Like I have your back and you have my back.”

Looking back over the last four years, Avila said she will miss it.

“I came into the team with no expectations and no idea what I was really getting myself into,” Avila said.

After their first performance of “Like A Boy,” Avila and her teammates went backstage and were surrounded by the other teams, who built a tunnel for them to walk through while they performed their song.

Other dancers came up to her and said they loved the dance. Avila said she will always remember that special first win.

“Everything that happened, I tried so hard to just take it in and understand that it was bigger than I thought. And how crazy and amazing it is that I get to be a part of it.”