Ana Luiza Luizi and Junio Enrique of That Brazilian Couple chatted about their career as dancers, actors, social media influencers, and content creators.
What inspires you each day as actors, dancers, and creators?
Those are three different fields yet very similar when their job is to connect us artists to our audience through stories. We are very inspired to have such a supportive community that appreciates all we do as artists. And that motivates us so we can wake up every day excited to do what we are meant to do.
We believe the main inspiration comes from the fact that our community is expecting our videos daily. We receive tons of messages and dm’s from our followers thanking us for the daily dose of happiness. The appreciation and respect towards what we share with them are very motivational. The feedback we receive is definitely an inspiration to us. We like to say that it’s a two-way street, we get inspired to inspire.
What do your plans for the future include?
Due to the outpour of love and support, we decided to launch “That Brazilian Couple” as a nonprofit organization. Our mission is to inspire and nurture the human spirit, one person, one smile, and one dance at a time.
Going further than just entertaining with our content we aim to educate people, mainly about having a healthy lifestyle and using dance as medicine – both physically and emotionally. We’ve also been asked for online classes and we are working on creating our online courses. We will still perform at the Metropolitan Opera, but we will dedicate our personal time to our nonprofit endeavor.
Another plan we have for the near future is to have a baby. We are actually trying to get pregnant. Due to the busy dance routine and schedule, we waited till we thought was the right time and after the pandemic, we had time to see our life from a different perspective and we came to the conclusion that we would love to grow our family.
How does it feel to be entertainers and content creators in the digital age? (now with streaming and technology being so prevalent)
It’s a completely different way to share our work. When we had to stop our performances at the Met Opera during the lockdown, we had no idea that everything was going to change so drastically.
We had our personal accounts on Instagram but we never posted ballet or dance videos. Ballet dancers are usually very critical of themselves. (Technic) Or at least we were.
We liked to perform and move on to the next project or show. We don’t usually see or hear from everyone in the audience but on social media, the response and feedback are delivered immediately, so we learned to let go of our self-judgment.
After the first three weeks of being home without our routine, we were bored and started to scroll through some Tiktok videos and we somehow felt like it was carnival! Everyone was having a great time away from the madness around the world.
So we decided to post our first “Tiktok video” and that video had over a million views in two days and we gain over 20 thousand followers. We saw that as an opportunity to share some happiness with everyone who was going through the exact thing we were. And that became our therapy during such an unknown time.
It’s amazing how many people we could share our dances, skits, and life with. We were a bit scared at the beginning with the number of messages and feedback we got, but after a while, we understood that it was a great avenue to focus on the business part of it.
It honestly feels just like the theatre, but now we became producers, directors, and costume designers besides having an audience a hundred times bigger than the Madison Square Garden at its full capacity.
The immediate response online makes it a very special way to see if what you just created works or not. Being able to be your own boss is a very challenging quest but somehow freely (empowering).
What are some of your proudest professional moments?
We were very lucky to perform in theatres in many parts of the world. Opening festivals as guest artists in important events. We also won various prizes in major dance competitions. Had so many professional moments that we are proud of and will cherish forever.
One of the highlights was joining the Metropolitan Opera and performing alongside many amazing artists. Ok, we do have something that makes us both really proud… we’ve been big fans of Sound of Music (movie) for the longest time, and last year we got invited from The Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization to do the Laendler’s Dance in partnership to celebrate International Dance day.
It was like a dream we’d never had come true. And to top it off, we are partnering up once more to celebrate World Ballet day on October 1st. And this time we are doing a revival of Carrousel. We couldn’t be more proud. And that’s the power of social connection through social media.
What advice do you have for young actors, dancers, and creators?
Our advice would be to follow their passion. We know that it could be hard to focus on what brings happiness and inspiration. Especially with so much information online, even we, after so many years of working towards finding our artistic truth can find ourselves a bit overwhelmed with so many choices.
Finding a way to communicate with others through your art is the best reward as an artist, creator, or influencer. Be consistent, be patient and be kind to yourself. Anything you put your heart and mind into will pay off.
What would you like to say to your fans and supporters?
We are so grateful to our community. We’ve been so fortunate to have fans and supporters from all over the globe. We wanna say that you all have changed the path of our lives.
Through your eyes we saw our relationship from a different perspective, we were reminded of things we took for granted during a time when the world was in such need of human connection and love. We are a better couple after meeting you all.
Thank you from the bottom of our hearts. And we are here to stay.
What does the word success mean to you? (My favorite question)
We like to say that we both are big-time dreamers. Ana used to collect articles, magazines, and videos of ballet since she was a little girl. She use to go watch the performances and she knew the names of all of the dancers.
Just a couple of months ago while visiting Brazil and looking through her old belongings, we realized that she manifested without even knowing. She got to work with all of those stars from her newspapers, magazines, and videos collection.
Junio comes from a small town and a family of dancers. He and his brothers used to watch videos to learn ballet, because back when they started, there weren’t many teachers like these days.
One particular video was a video of Michail Baryshinikov performing Don Quixote at the Metropolitan Opera. He remembers vividly when The orchestra started to play, the big red curtains opened and there he was the biggest dance star.
Fast forward 20 years there was Junio Enrique performing the principal role in Carmen at The Metropolitan Opera: the orchestra playing, big red curtains opening, and him. Success is a collection of little achievements. We both agree that success means being able to do what you love for as long as you feel alive by doing it.
To learn more about That Brazilian Couple, follow them on Instagram and TikTok.
