Today we’d like to introduce you to Ana Maria Alvarez
Hi Ana Maria, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I was born in 1977, in Greenboro, NC. My father is Cubano labor union organizer and movement leader, and my mother is a southern labor educator, film maker and the smartest woman I know. The labor movement and my parent’s community of comrades and friends is the village that raised me; my chosen family. I have always loved to dance – my parents were never interested in what it meant to be ‘successful’ they were interested in me ‘changing the world’. That was my charge as a little girl, thinking about the future and how I would leave this world a more loving and just place than I found it. How was I going to build a life that made a difference? I was a bun head (ballet dancer) for about a decade and with some “help” from a dance teacher, soon realized that my body was too curvy for that to be a viable option. This led me to connect with Dr. Elenor Gwynn of A&T State university (an HBCU in Greensboro, NC). Working with the E. Gwynn dancers brought me into the worlds of West African, Haitian and Afro-Cuban dance and music. I devoured every opportunity to train and perform while also studying with artists such as the Urban Bush Women, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Julio Jean, Susanna Cook, Narciso Medina, Cutumba Baile Foklorico de Cuba and others. After receiving a BA in dance and politics from Oberlin College in 1999, I spent a few years in NYC dancing and working with social group workers at Lifelines Community Arts Project. I became inspired by the way dance, movement and community organizing were all interlinked and making dance felt like a clear way to make a difference. I moved to Los Angeles in 2002 earned my MFA in choreography at UCLA’s Dept of World Arts and Culture. My thesis concert in 2005 was called CONTRA-TIEMPO. This work explored Salsa as a metaphor for resistance. After two years of continuing to share and perform this work, I filled for 501c3, built our first board of directors, received our first contract with the Alhambra School District and CONTRA-TIEMPO became a non-profit dance theater company committed to transforming the world through dance. During this time I married by best friend and adopted two incredible children who I are the most amazing teachers. For two decades the work with CONTRA-TIEMPO has deepened and grown tremendously with the contributions of hundreds of artists, collaborators, supporters, audience members and community participants. Our 20 year anniversary is this year! In the Fall of 2022 I accepted a full time tenured faculty position at UC San Diego and after my first year I became head of the dance area of the Theatre + Dance Department. CONTRA-TIEMPO has now built a meaningful partnership with UCSD’s ArtPower and we have shared our last two evening length works on campus (azucar Spring 2024 and joyUS justUS Fall 2024) and are now working with choreographer holly johnston on a newly commissioned work called “Roots of Loving Us” which is set to premiere in 2026. It has been a beautiful journey and it is just the beginning!
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Truly I see challenges as opportunities for growth – and there have been many! For many years I have been moving and leading with a velocity and momentum that has been intense – both personally and for our organization. This energy and ferocity helped in building momentum as a leader, but often made it challenging internally in our organization for me interpersonally. We have spent a lot of time, effort, resources and commitment to building a healthy work environment within CONTRA-TIEMPO and are continually growing in this area. This work is never done, but I feel clear that it’s work that we are committed to collectively and I can confidently say that our work centers around care; care for each other, care for our community and care for the world.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your 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 re-fuel our creative process, and vice-versa.
We aim to accomplish our mission through 3 programmatic trunks: Artistic Production, Community Engagement, and Dance Education and Leadership Development. We operate within these 3 trunks separately, AND each trunk informs another. At the intersection of all of these trunks lie our company values.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
There have been various national and international crises – the economic collapse in 2008, huge funding cuts in LA for ACPN (arts partnerships in schools), the first Trump presidency, the COVID epidemic, the continued death of our black and brown brothers, sisters and siblings at the hands of police and now the LA Fires and the beginning of the 2nd Trump presidency – none of this has been easy – and we have continued to deepen, engage and build the work not in spite of this all but in relationship with this all. I am grateful for our CONTRA-TIEMPO community and the way we practice joy as superpower. I am grateful for our ancestral movement practices that teach us what connection, community and care FEEL like. I am grateful for the ways we continue to show up for the work, even on those days when it feels hard. I am grateful to share my life with other artists and human beings who understand and practice living as we/they are a part of a much bigger broader world! It’s not about me but it’s about WE!
Lessons:
– when you mess up (which you will – because we all do) : stop, listen, reflect and try again
– take time to show up for others
– take time to show up for yourself (meaning sleep, nourishment, joy practices and learning/growing)
– know whats going on around you and find the ways (bite size ways) that you can make a difference – every small act/choice/contribution counts and builds for a large swell!
– put time/effort /focus towards on person to person connection
– listen to others through a lens of connection versus judgement
– follow your bliss, develop practices for your life that bring you joy and tend to them, repeat them and share them!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.contra-tiempo.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/contra_tiempo
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CONTRATIEMPOActivistDanceTheater
- LinkedIn: https://megaphone.link/OOOKK7369655926
- Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/contra_tiempo
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@CONTRATIEMPO
- Yelp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRmsbvMasDg
- Soundcloud: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5huplbgFoLMsUqVCBw34Ml?si=TekFeEyVSSWxbKDfP64D-w
- Other: https://www.instagram.com/movementartivist
