Today we’d like to introduce you to Ana Maria Alvarez.
Hi Ana Maria, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I started dancing as a young child – I don’t remember my life without dance. Both of my parents were involved in the labor movement, and my father’s job as an organizer had us moving frequently, primarily around the Southeast United States. I was the perpetual new kid, but dance was always there. I studied dance in various studios, community centers and after-school programs. I became very serious about ballet, but in 10th grade, I decided to leave ballet altogether.
I began working with a college dance company led by Dr. Elenor Gwynn at NC A&T State University, one of the Historically Black Universities in Greensboro, NC. There is where I began my journey into the Cuban and Haitian roots of Katherine Dunham Technique. My father is Cuban and I grew up seeing and dancing Salsa socially when we visited family in Miami. My Abo (grandfather) was my first and will always be my favorite dance partner! In high school and college, I traveled to study various dance forms of the Caribbean, including Jamaica, Bahamas, Puerto Rico and several trips to Cuba. My junior year of college, I studied intensely and performed tango in Argentina for seven months.
During this time, I also attended the Urban Bush Women’s (UBW) first Summer Leadership Institute in Florida and the Katherine Dunham Institute in NYC. Both of these experiences shifted what I knew to be possible and inspired me to fully take on dance and social change as my career path. I wound up interning with UBW for a winter term and have been so fortunate to call Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, the founding Artistic Director of UBW, a mentor over the years. I am currently on a journey to become Dunham certified, and I am honored to one day be able to continue to shine a light on Mrs. Dunham’s incredible legacy and teach her form to my students!
I majored in Dance and Politics at Oberlin College in Ohio. Upon graduation, I danced professionally in NYC, mainly Afro-Haitian and Tango, while also working full time with the Center for Family Life in their arts program called “Lifelines” Community Arts Project. Julie Brockway, the founder of this program is another longtime mentor. After working for several years in NYC, I decided to move to LA to attend UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures where I received my MFA in Choreography. I never left, and that was over 20 years ago!
Out of my MFA thesis grew CONTRA-TIEMPO! After graduating, I filed for 501c3 – as it quickly became clear that I was running a dance company without the structure to support my dancers and myself. We hit the ground running, and after almost two decades of doing this work, we have grown into a prolific activist dance theater organization that embodies the power of our ancestral technologies to build a more loving and just future! I feel deeply inspired by the work we do and the message we share both on and off stage.
My latest journey began just last year at UC San Diego. I was hired as tenured faculty in UCSD’s Theatre & Dance Department and have become the head of Dance. I am working with students, faculty, staff and community to build a powerful future rooted in the wisdom of our ancestral technologies and in the values of rigor, joy, community and transformation! We are truly building a movement down here and it feels like the work of CONTRA-TIEMPO is rippling into the field in new ways! I am excited about the future!
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?
It hasn’t been a smooth road, but I also wouldn’t change anything about it. Even in the roughest of times, there have been tremendous opportunities for growth and I wouldn’t be where I am right now – living my purpose with the people I have the privilege to work and family with – if it weren’t for these struggles!
Some of our original struggles now seem way in the distance as the landscape has changed. Some past struggles were:
– Founding a dance company right before the entire economy tanked.
– Building work in a field that has for so long been focused on modern and ballet as the rubrics for “real dance,” and being continuously told what I was doing didn’t belong in the concert dance world.
– Being a woman of color and being taken seriously in a leadership position, especially when I was young and have always had a lot of energy and excitement about this work. This field is dominated by men artistic directors/choreographers, and I’ve often been treated like my excitement and drive weren’t going to last once I “understood” the field… that wasn’t the case. 🙂
– Dealing with funders who have supported the growth and work and then decided to give money to the arts no longer.
– The struggle of growing and developing as a leader while doing the work- kind of like learning to fly a plane as it’s in the air. It was difficult overcoming my desire to want to please everyone, and I had to learn the hard way to trust my gut. I had to learn that not everyone is going to love me or agree with me all the time. I’ve made lots of mistakes and missteps but there wasn’t a lot of space or grace for me to fall and recover, and that has been hard – but again, a gift of growth.
There are still struggles:
– Having to explain and re-explain the value and depth of our work. People get it once they experience it, but I find that it is sometimes challenging for folks to understand the transformational nature of our work and how it creates deep and lasting impacts on individuals, communities and systems.
– I had several miscarriages in the midst of building CONTRA-TIEMPO and then decided to adopt. Becoming a mama and raising my familia and kids while continuing to deepen and expand the mission of the organization with an incredible team has been an amazing ride, but also lots of challenges and opportunities for growth!
– I do not get enough sleep, and I struggle to care for my body in the way it needs, although I see the light at the end of the tunnel as we build in more care practices as an organization. I can already feel the impact of these shifts.
– Securing enough funding to pay us all what we deserve to be paid and support the work to thrive is the nature of this nonprofit work. Individual donors have never been our focus as our work prioritizes communities – so if you are someone out there who wants to support meaningful work with a track record – please call us!
It’s an amazing time right now for CONTRA-TIEMPO. The idea that there could be a place for a Latina movement artivist from the south who believes dance could transform the world is beyond a dream actualized. We have grown into this flourishing horizontally-led multi-hyphenate artivist dance theater organization, making radical and groundbreaking work but also moving and being moved by human beings to build a more loving and just future for us all. It is our time. The world finally feels ready!
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Tickets are on sale now for our August 18th west coast premiere of our most recent work, “¡azúcar!” This piece is a courageous naming of and intentional obliteration of the undercurrent and often unspoken anti-blackness in Latinidad. It is embodied through the practice and sharing of our Afro-Latine ancestral movement and vibrational technologies. The evening-length performance of “¡azúcar!” shares stories of sugar as a harmful system of oppression, reveres the sacred caretakers of ancestral resiliency, and elevates the rise of our human spirits in ruptures of rhythm, music, and dance.
Since 2005, our mission has been to create a future where all people are awakened to a sense of themselves as artists and social change agents through engaging the community in the creative process, facilitating dialogue, and creating physically intense and politically astute performance work.
CONTRA-TIEMPO is a bold, multilingual Los Angeles-based activist dance theater company that creates communities where all people are awakened to a sense of themselves as artists and social change agents who move through the world with compassion, confidence, and joy.
We create a new physical, visual and sonic vocabulary that collages Salsa, Afro-Cuban, hip-hop, and contemporary dance with theater, compelling text, and original music to bring dynamic multi-modal experiences to the concert stage.
While our performances are consistently electrifying, what sets the company apart most is our unique relationship to our own community. CONTRA-TIEMPO takes an uncompromisingly radical approach to the ways in which artists function within communities and create their work. We intentionally engage diverse audiences, cultivate dancer leaders, and center stories not traditionally heard on the concert stage, using our engagement process to inform and continuously refuel our creative process and vice-versa.
Much like the communities we reach, CONTRA-TIEMPO is itself a tapestry. Our 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 I seek to address in our work.
Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
Do the things that bring you joy! Following your bliss sounds really cliche, but it is so powerful. Too often, young people that are emerging in their careers don’t get encouraged to do that. You should follow in the direction of the things that give you the most joy. Because otherwise, what are we doing any of this for? Working hard at something that you love will always bring joy.
Integrity is huge! When you say you’re going to show up, show up. When you say you’re going to stand for something, stand for it. It is imperative that you align your actions with your values.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.contra-tiempo.org
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/contra_tiempo
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/CONTRATIEMPOActivistDanceTheater
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/contra_tiempo
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/@CONTRATIEMPO
- Other: https://vimeo.com/user1522268
Image Credits
1. Photo by Erik Jepsen at Connection Jam UCSD 2. Photo by Farah Sosa from “Caña” film commissioned by the Getty 3. Photo by Christopher Duggan and Jamie Kraus courtesy of Jacob’s Pillow 4. Courtesy of John Michael Kohler Arts Center 5. Photo by Farah Sosa during residency at Helms Bakery
