The Company

CONTRA-TIEMPO is a bold, multilingual Los Angeles-based activist dance theater company. Rooted in the Afro-Latinx movement and ancestral practices of the Diaspora, the company collaboratively creates communities where all people are awakened to a sense of themselves as artists and social change agents, moving through the world with compassion and joy. 

The company creates a new physical, visual and sonic vocabulary that collages Salsa, Afro-Cuban, hip-hop, and contemporary dance with theater, storytelling, poetry, film and original music to bring dynamic multi-modal experiences both on and off the concert stage.

CONTRA-TIEMPO’s performances are consistently electrifying, rooted in a powerful blend of rigor and spirit. What sets the company apart is their uncompromisingly radical approach to the ways in which artists function within communities, create their work and make a difference in the world. They intentionally engage diverse audiences, cultivate dancer leaders, and center stories from their communities, using their engagement process to inform and continuously re-fuel their creative process, and vice-versa.

Much like the communities they reach, CONTRA-TIEMPO is itself a tapestry. The company members are professional dancers, artists, immigrants, educators, activists, organizers, and movers of all types, living and working across Los Angeles and across the country. Each company member lives, expresses, and struggles within the varied and infinitely complex political and personal landscapes that Founding Artistic Director, Ana Maria Alvarez, seeks to address in CONTRA-TIEMPO’s work.

“represents the kind of socially aware contemporary work that only a few dance artists such as Bill T. Jones reliably provide…in heart, mind and soul this is the real thing!”

— Los Angeles Times

CONTRA-TIEMPO has a strong touring record which includes, Ordway Center for the Performing Arts (MN), Modlin Center for the Arts (VA), UNC Wilmington (NC), Dance Place (DC), ASU Gammage and Mesa Arts Center (AZ), Lincoln Center OOD (NYC), Ford Amphitheater (CA) & Jacob’s Pillow (MA) among others. The company is known for their powerful engagement work and directly involving communities and audiences in art making. The company has several large-scale performance works, many shorter pieces, dance residency programs for youth, and master classes (in various genres) for all ages. When booked and utilized fully the company has been known to sell out venues with the majority of audience members being first time ticket buyers. This company’s specialty is engaging new audience members. In 2014 CONTRA-TIEMPO toured to South America as dance ambassadors, with DanceMotionUSA, a program of the Bureau of Educational & Cultural Affairs of the US Department of State, produced by BAM, showcasing the finest contemporary American Dance abroad.

contra-tiempo.org

PRESS KIT

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The Director

Ana Maria Alvarez a 2020 Doris Duke Artist and an inaugural Dance/USA Artist Fellow, is a prolific choreographer, skilled dancer, masterful teaching artist, and movement activist who has achieved multiple accolades for her dynamic works. Her thesis work explored the abstraction of Latine dance, specifically Salsa, as a way to express social resistance as related to the U.S. immigration battle. This work became the impetus for founding CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Theater in 2005 in Los Angeles. Her most recent work with the company, ¡Azúcar!, was commissioned by NC State Live in Raleigh, and premiered March 2023. Alvarez and CONTRA-TIEMPO have continued to tour “joyUS justUS” (2017). This signature work is a radical celebration of humanity and the feminine, centering joy as a more loving and just future is imagined. Her work has been presented in theaters across the country and the world, including in Germany, Bulgaria, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile and El Salvador. She was selected as the 2018 BiNational Artist in Residence, connecting communities in the Sonoran Desert, Phoenix (U.S.), Douglas (U.S.), Tucson (U.S.), and Agua Prieta (M.X.), through leading artistic workshops, collaborative performances, and public talks, and concluding with a performance at the U.S.-Mexico border. Alvarez and CONTRA-TIEMPO were also invited to represent the best of American Contemporary Dance Abroad through The Obama Administration’s U.S. Department of State cultural exchange program, produced by BAM, DanceMotionUSA. In the Fall of 2022, Alvarez was invited to join the UC San Diego Theatre and Dance Department as a tenured faculty member. In this exciting new chapter of her career, Alvarez, in collaboration with her colleagues and students, is imagining and designing a new future for embodied performance and practice at UCSD.

“The new face of Los Angeles dance, the new voice as well…”

–Los Angeles Times

Alvarez has been recognized with a number of awards and grants including NEFA’s National Dance Project, the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, LA City Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles County and the California Arts Council among others. She is the recipient of the Mujeres Destacadas award from LA Opinion and a Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival Rainbow Award for her work with CONTRA-TIEMPO called “Agua Furiosa.” She received a Bachelor of Arts in dance and politics from Oberlin College and a Master of Fine Arts in choreography from UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children.

¡azúcar! – Trailer

¡azúcar! – Creative process

joyUS justUS – Trailer

joyUS justUS – creative community engagement process

CONTRA-TIEMPO dances for Ecuadorian elderly

Repertory

¡AZÚCAR! (2023) “¡azúcar!” is a courageous naming/confrontation of and intentional obliteration of the undercurrent and often unspoken anti-Blackness in latinidad. Questions are continuing to drive the process as we begin to understand the complicated history of sugar and the messages from our ancestors. What does it feel like to individually and collectively heal, what does it move like? 20 brilliant artists and collaborators take audiences through a journey of Celia Cruz’s vibrations, unearthing history embedded in our bodies. Through “¡azúcar!”, we explore ancestral wisdoms about a plant that once aided in our healing, used as a way to sweeten medicinal concoctions, now extracted, refined and used as weaponized poison. This courageous work is rooted in and inspired by the sacred feminine, personal narratives of food, labor, community, sabor and explorations of ‘familying’ and healing as practices. “¡azúcar!” premiered at NC State LIVE on March 31, 2023.

View the tech rider

JOYUS JUSTUS (2018) “joyUS justUS” is an evening length participatory Activist Dance Theater experience that takes on joy as the ultimate expression of resistance. Whenever humans have survived immense hardship and injustice, prevailing with their humanity intact, the presence of joy­­or, the knowingness and celebration of our true beauty and power­­ has always been at the root. With sound by d. Sabela grimes and songs by Las Cafeteras, “joyUS justUS” reclaims the dominant deficit ­based narrative of people of color in this country as being underprivileged, voiceless, powerless, and victimized, and flips it on its head by embodying stories of joy collected from communities of color in South Los Angeles. These stories are personal truths about the power of hope, faith, and family, the strength of the villages that have raised our children, the wealth that lives in our collective histories of struggle and resistance. These truths are embodied through the technically rigorous social dance forms that were born out of these experiences, that are at the root of our company’s Urban Latin Dance technique, and that are the physical embodiment of that most powerful, healing joy. Through the conversations with South LA communities, retelling their stories through movement on the concert stage, inviting audiences locally and nationally to actively participate in what they’re experiencing on the stage, and continuing to engage broader audiences in the telling of their own truths, CONTRA-TIEMPO creates spaces of joy and healing, allowing the collective “us” to feel more connected, loved, powerful, and alive.

View the tech rider

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AND RESIDENCIES

CONTRA-TIEMPO seeks to change the way that artists exist and function within communities. For them, community engagement and artistic production are inextricably linked. They cannot exist outside of the communities that they inhabit. The experiences, cultural creations, and “we-stories” of their communities are the inspiration and motivation for their art making. And it is their duty as artists to share their creative power to help grow the creative and social power of their communities.
CONTRA-TIEMPO believes that art and action are two sides of the same coin, as they both require the ability to imagine new possibilities and then create what does not yet exist. Both operate in the “in-between”. By engaging communities as participants and witnesses of arts experiences tied to their beautiful humanity, they endeavor to simultaneously awaken their sense of themselves as artists and as social change agents.

CHOREOGRAPHIC LAB: BUILDING THE MOVEMENT THROUGH MOVEMENT (2 HOURS)
(30-40 participants) In CONTRA-TIEMPO’s choreographic laboratories participants witness a small p performance offering by the company from our newest work, joyUS justUS. Participants are led in several movement experiences, embodying joy and connection. They then as a group, create their own 30 second, movement/theater-based work embodying the elements: water, earth, wind, and fire. The last half of the choreographic lab, participants sit together in council and share their own stories connected to the themes of the work. The labs provide a rare opportunity for community art-making, “holding space” to hear each other’s stories and building deep and meaningful connections through creative and generative practice We have adopted the choreographic lab process as one of our core community engagement practices. Themes: Restorative Justice, Radical Joy, Sacred Feminine and more… Full Company Recommended/Appropriate for all ages.

DANCING FAMILIAS (1 HOUR)
(Unlimited number of participants) Groove with CONTRA-TIEMPO’S Artistic Director, dancer, and mama artivist, Ana Maria Alvarez, for her full-body dance class: Dancing Familias. Designed for all levels, caregivers, parents, kiddos, or anyone who wants to work that radical joy muscle! Ana Maria will guide the group in a powerful experience rooted in Afro-Latin movement and grooving to build connection.

SABOR SESSION- RADICAL JOY SESSION (1 HOUR- 1 HOUR & 15 min)
(100 participants) Los Angeles based Activist Dance Theater company, CONTRA-TIEMPO will get you moving and grooving with their “Sabor Session” (from the Spanish word for “flavor”) where dancers will guide participants in Afro-Latin social dance forms that are rooted in radical joy and in exercises that promote community engagement. Additionally, CONTRA-TIEMPO will share an excerpt of their work. (This may be done without the performance as well). Full company = 100 participants; 2 Dancers = up to 50 participants Appropriate for all ages.

COMMUNITY “GET DOWN” (1 hour)
(up to 300 particpants) A joyous community dance jam. Where dancers lead participants in various afro latin and urban forms, salsa, rumba, samba and hip-hop grooves. Together we embody joy as a tool to build community. Appropriate for all ages.

CONTRA-TIEMPO CLASS OFFERINGS (20-60 Participants):

RUMBA FUNDAMENTALS Rumba is a traditional Afro-Cuban form of dance and music, we will teach elements of Yambu, Guaguanco and Columbia. Elements of these forms are incorporated into pieces from our repertory.Students will learn to embody both the rhythms and movements.

COMPARSA FUNDAMENTALS Comparsa is a traditional Afro-Cuban dance form, rooted in the tradition of Carnival. This movement is also a part of the ‘clave’ rep piece and can be a great teaching tool to bring community together. This class is appropriate for all levels.

SALSA RUEDA Salsa Rueda is an Afro-Cuban form of Salsa dancing, performed in a circle (“rueda” is Spanish for “wheel”). There is a caller who shouts movements for the participants to do, and the partners often switch throughout the dance. The dance can be used to both build community and to help students build language and body confidence. CONTRA-TIEMPO regularly uses Rueda as a tool to teach concrete skills of compassionate partnership, collaboration, eye contact and taking responsibility for our decisions and impact on others.

ANCESTRAL TECHNOLOGIES OF THE AFRO-LATINE DIASPORA – CONTRA-TIEMPO is reframing the idea of technology, engaging it as a practice or tactic developed by human beings to solve problems and create solutions. This framework allows the company to see their music and movement forms as the powerful resilience building tools they are – tools that created and continue to create futures of possibility and hope. This is a full bodied movement class that continues to evolve and grow with each new generation of movers. This class will give participants access to their fullest self expression and movement possibilities through experimentation, play and the study of specific embodied ancestral movement practices including rumba, salsa, hip-hop, and afro-beat. This class is appropriate for all ages and levels.

HIP-HOP GROOVES Hip Hop is an American art form, rooted in African American and Latinx communities. Originally born in the Bronx, NY, Hip Hop has evolved and grown into a worldwide phenomenon. CONTRA-TIEMPO’s Hip Hop Grooves class works with students embody movement, rhythms and grooves. The class will help students build movement language, connection and confidence – ultimately to build community.

CLAVE PLAY/BODY RHYTHM WORK This class will focus on teaching 4/4 clave and 6/8 clave, and working our way towards some of the more complex rhythms that are in the company’s work. The Clave is the rhythmic basis for Salsa, Rumba and many other dance and musical forms across the diaspora. The rhythm can be found in almost any form of music, and our commitment is that students learn to embody this rhythm, to open up a world of creative possibilities; decolonizing the clave!

TOUR DATES

GALLERY

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