> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Argentine-born instructor Pampillo builds salsa academy in Santa Monica - URL: https://www.smdp.com/del-rey/ - Published: 2005-12-05T16:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-23T08:16:08.000Z - Author: Guest Author - Tags: local, Santa Monica, #archive-import It’s been a long journey for Pampillo to get to the front of this class. When Pampillo, 45, first emigrated from Argentina to Santa Monica 20 years ago as a single mother with little money, she was determined to become “the best instructor in the world.” Since then, she has taught aerobics, dance exercise classes and salsa to about 4,000 people in Santa Monica and founded Isabelle’s Salsa Academy on Lincoln Boulevard between Arizona Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard. A dancer since the age of 3, Pampillo started sharing her passion in the late 1970s in Argentina when she taught jazz to her high school friends. In the mid 1980s, she and some of her friends who were also serious about dance traveled to New York to take classes on and off Broadway in jazz and tap dancing. Pampillo’s resolve to become a certified aerobics instructor by the World Fitness Association of America brought her and some friends to Los Angeles, close to the WFAA headquarters in Sherman Oaks. One day, the group of friends landed in Santa Monica after taking a wrong turn in their rental car. “I have to live here,” she told her friends. When she returned to Argentina, she taught aerobics and worked on TV as the assistant of another aerobics instructor. She returned to Santa Monica in 1985 in hopes of staying permanently, but kept her plans a secret from her parents. Her move to America was not driven by her career aspirations alone. She also wanted to free herself from the stigma she received for marrying young after getting pregnant at age 20, she said. Pampillo was divorced two and a half years later, and the Catholic Church later annulled the marriage. A year after she moved to Santa Monica, she arranged for her 5-year-old son, Juan Pablo Paillot, to join her. Pampillo’s family expected her to return home with her son after a year when her visa ran out. But they stayed illegally for the next three and a half years until they received amnesty from the U.S. government, making them legal residents. She and her son became citizens five years ago. Pampillo found work at various fitness studios in Santa Monica, where she taught aerobics, before she became a WFAA international consultant for Latin America. This position required her to travel to Latin American countries to certify instructors and attend international conventions. Not only was Pampillo becoming highly recognized internationally as a trainer, but she was also moving up to more prestigious fitness clubs in Santa Monica. Despite her success, she decided to move with her son, who was 11 at the time, to Mammoth Lake, where he could be educated in quality public schools with small classrooms. Pampillo continued to travel to Latin America for WFAA, and on a trip to Panama in 1994 she heard salsa music for the first time. Eager to learn to dance to the salsa, she asked her colleagues at a workshop to teach her the dance. “I will never teach an aerobics class or step class to regular American pop music anymore, only to Latin (music),” she told herself. “This is too much fun.” For the next four years, as her son attended school in Mammoth Lake, Pampillo drove to Santa Monica to dance salsa there. She was determined to start a business offering salsa classes in Santa Monica when her son graduated from high school. And she did just that. She moved back to Santa Monica in 1998 and founded Isabelle’s Salsa Academy in 1999. Even though Pampillo is a professional salsa dancer, she has never entered a competition. Various obstacles have always prevented her from competing, including raising her son and flying to Argentina frequently to care for her ailing mother. Pampillo had another setback a month ago when she re-injured her upper back, which she initially hurt 12 years ago when she fell from a ski lift. She expects to be back on the dance floor full time in January and hopes to compete in salsa competitions next year. The Daily Press recently spoke to Pampillo about salsa, emigrating from Argentina and her life in Santa Monica. What motivates you as a dance instructor? “What excites me is to give both the ladies and gentleman the tools or passageway to enjoy dancing as much as I do. We are all addicted to something. Why not make your addiction something that is good for you and is fun? “If you get better at dancing, it increases people’s self esteem. If you put in the time and the patience and are willing to go through some of the uncomfortable things that come with the learning process, it’s a guarantee that you’re going to have fun with it. A percentage (of people) isn’t willing to go through that awkward feeling. I’m always willing to take a class of something I don’t know — pole dancing, kite surfing. Why? Because it’s so easy as an instructor to forget how awkward and stupid you can feel when you’re learning something new.” Tell me about moving from Argentina to Santa Monica. “I said to myself, ‘If I can stay, I’m going to stay,’ with a bag on my shoulder and a thousand dollars to start a whole new life. My parents didn’t know anything. This was undercover. Of course, I had the legality (problem) and paperwork issue. My English was always good ‘cause I went to English school.” What motivated you to leave your homeland? “It was so spur of the moment. There were a lot of reasons for it. At the time I didn’t really know very well (why I wanted to leave). I was just like, ‘I have to get out of here.’ “Besides that, LA was the Mecca of fitness. In my head I was like, ‘I am going to go be the best instructor in the world.’ I was telling myself, ‘I am going to go live in America. The American Dream.’ “In my subconscious I was really running away from all these societal pressures from feeling like an outcast from having to marry so young and because later I got a divorce. I got pregnant, I got divorced. I was so young with a kid in my lap. It just got to me. It was just hard. “When I came on my first trip and went to New York, the whole thing about being anonymous was very appealing to me. It was a fresh start.” What obstacles did you overcome to become the owner of a dance academy in Santa Monica? “The first seven years, I felt a lot of discrimination. ‘You’re just a dishwasher from Mexico,’ (people would say). (And, they would ask), ‘Are you Mexican?’ And I was like, ‘What does that mean?’ “It was hard leaving my country and my family, with a kid and no money, and a new country, a new culture, all by yourself, no papers, no father figure (for my son). “I don’t know if (the discrimination I received is) a little bit the motivator. But, I actually don’t think so. It just so happened that my life circumstances went from this step, this step. And, when I discovered salsa dancing, I fell in love with it. This passion and obsession I developed for it, I had to share it. “I knew when I moved back to Santa Monica (from Mammoth Lake), I was going to find a dance studio and teach. Now, I have my own business, which took a lot of guts and time and determination and in Santa Monica.” What do you like about Santa Monica? “I love Santa Monica, I do. We stayed in a hostel in Hollywood (on my first trip to America). We had a car and were driving in LA. We drove around, got lost and got to Santa Monica. We saw the Saint Monica statue with all the palm trees, the virgin. I said, ‘I have to live here.’ “I come from Buenos Aires. Like New York, it’s a city. (Now) I live on the beach. I associate beach with happiness. When I grew up, we spent nine months of the year in the city, and my family and I went to the beach house for the summer. That was my happiest time. This is why I live in this quarter. I’d rather have this little tiny apartment than a three-bedroom house in the city. I can step on the balcony and be on the beach. “I love how everything is almost in walking distance. I hardly ever want to get out of here. I love the fact that I can walk in my sandals to the corner store. It feels like a small community. It has that beach-town, friendly atmosphere.“ *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 5, 2005.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/120505.pdf?ref=smdp.com)