Today we’d like to introduce you to Lilia Bravo.
Lilia, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My story has never followed a straight line. Dance, education, entrepreneurship, motherhood, and living between two countries have all become part of who I am today. And somehow, everything has led me to the same purpose: El arte como herramienta de vida.
I started teaching dance in 2007. At the time, I didn’t know where it would take me. I just knew that I loved dancing, teaching, and seeing what happened when someone began to feel more confident through movement.
Over the years, dance grew with me. I created Dance Fusión by Lyly Brago in Tijuana and began working with children, teenagers, and adults through Belly Dance and Polynesian dance. Teaching made me realize that dance can be much more than learning choreography or preparing for a stage. It can give someone confidence, community, discipline, and a place where they feel they belong.
But dance has never been my only world.
For many years, I also had a career in the automotive auction industry while continuing to teach. I learned about business, leadership, sales, and what it takes to keep going even when you are balancing completely different parts of your life.
Then, in 2021, I decided to bring another dream to life and opened Brago Coffee & Art in Tijuana, a space where I could combine two things I love: coffee and art.
In 2023, my life changed again when I became a mom. Motherhood changed my priorities and the way I look at success. It made me think more deeply about what I was building, why I was building it, and what kind of example I wanted to give my son.
That same year, I created Arte en la Frontera, a project that gives artists a space to share their work and creates connections through art across the Tijuana–San Diego border.
Today, my life is still not a straight line. I teach, create events, work on my coffee business, continue my education, travel between the U.S. and Mexico, and most importantly, I am a mom.
Sometimes it is organized. Sometimes it is complete chaos. But it is real.
And through every version of my life, one idea continues to make more sense to me:
El arte como herramienta de vida.
Art has been the tool that has allowed me to teach, create, connect with people, reinvent myself, and continue building a life with purpose.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
No, it definitely hasn’t been a smooth road.
One of my biggest challenges has been learning how to build my dreams without losing myself in the process. For a long time, I was trying to be everything at once: a dance teacher, a professional, an entrepreneur, a wife, and eventually a mother.
There have been moments when I questioned whether I was doing too much or whether I should choose just one path. I’ve had projects that worked, others that didn’t, financial uncertainty, long days, changes of plans, and many moments of starting over.
Motherhood added another layer to that. I love being a mom, but I also had to learn that becoming a mother didn’t mean that the woman, artist, and entrepreneur I was before had to disappear. I had to redefine what balance and success looked like for me.
Living between the U.S. and Mexico has also taught me a lot. My life is constantly moving between cultures, cities, responsibilities, and communities. Sometimes that is beautiful, and sometimes it is exhausting.
I’m still figuring things out. I don’t think there is a point where everything suddenly becomes perfectly balanced.
What I have learned is how to adapt, ask for help, change direction when necessary, and keep creating even when life doesn’t look exactly the way I planned.
For me, resilience hasn’t meant having everything under control. It has meant continuing to move forward while allowing my life and my dreams to evolve.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a dance educator, artist, and creative entrepreneur. I have been teaching dance since 2007, specializing in Belly Dance and Polynesian dances, working with children, teenagers, and adults.
But I think what defines my work most is that I don’t see dance as simply learning steps or performing on a stage.
For me, El arte como herramienta de vida means using art to build confidence, discipline, community, curiosity, and connection.
Education has become a very important part of the way I teach. I want my students to understand what they are dancing — the music, culture, history, and intention behind the movement — while still giving them a space where they can enjoy themselves and grow.
I am especially proud of creating spaces where different people can experience art. Through Dance Fusión, I have watched students grow from their first class to performing onstage. Through Arte en la Frontera, I have worked to create opportunities for emerging and established artists to share the same stage and connect communities across the U.S.–Mexico border. And through Brago Coffee & Art, I found another way to bring art into an everyday space.
What sets me apart is probably that I don’t separate all these parts of my life anymore. The teacher, the artist, the businesswoman, and the person who creates cultural projects are all connected.
I don’t want people to simply leave my classes knowing how to dance.
I want them to leave believing they are capable of more than they thought.
Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
If there is one thing I would like people to take from my story, it is that you don’t have to become only one version of yourself.
You can change. You can start again. You can be a mother and still have dreams of your own. You can build something, realize it isn’t working, change direction, and keep going.
I am still building my story. I don’t have everything figured out, and I think that is important to say.
What I do know is that art has been present through every version of my life. It has given me a way to connect with people, to teach, to create opportunities, and sometimes simply to find myself again.
That is why the phrase that represents everything I do is:
El arte como herramienta de vida.
Because sometimes art doesn’t just give us something beautiful to create.
It gives us a way to keep moving forward.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lyly_brago and https://www.instagram.com/brago.coffee.and.art_mx
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lilia.bravo.9
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@ailildancefusion
