Contra Tiempo

 
   

I DREAM AMERICA
 
I Dream America seeks to engage the tensions, commonalities, strains and histories between the Black and Latino communities. Traversing the political landscape of immigration and Hurricane Katrina, I Dream America will investigate compassion and peace, and paint a disarming and thought-provoking critique of contemporary life and injustice.
 
 

 
 
AGAINST THE TIMES

Salsa is a dance form that is rooted in Cuban and Puerto Rican cultural tradition. It is laden with social and political contradictions. An improvisational form, it is created and recreated with every new combination of people that dance it; a dance of change. Born from the fusion of African and Spanish musical influences, salsa was originally created as a cultural voice and form of expression for working class people. It has always been a patriarchal dance form, in that men are leaders and women are followers. In more recent times, the over sexualized representations of women have become more extreme, especially in styles that have been popularized by ballroom dancing and Hollywood films. The cast of CONTRA-TIEMPO will flip the script on who leads who... Together they will move resistance from being adversarial to being the fundamental key for communication and empowerment between partners and for a people.
 
 
 
  

 
 
 
 
 
ROUTES ENREDADOS
 
Routes Enredados (tangled routes) is a new urban Latin dance theater work exploring a young woman's journey of self discovery and nourishment through food, music, Afro-Latin and contemporary dance.
 
Dancing to a dynamic original score created by Cesar Alvarez, the performers of CONTRA-TIEMPO will explore the relationship between what and how we consume to survive, and our own distinct purpose in life. With live music, a dining room table that lives on stage for the entire piece, the company takes the audience members on a ride through worlds where dance, music and food are interchanged and connected seamlessly. The history of consumption and the rising complexity of globalization of our music, dance and food allows us to see how knowing our roots (grasping our history) could be the answer. 
 
There was a time when eating was a communal and sometimes sacred experience for people. As time and technology have progressed, we have become increasingly more detached from where our food comes from and its significance in our communities and life systems. Dances like Son and Danzon (traditional Cuban forms that were the beginnings of what we now know today as Salsa) were also a communal and sometimes sacred experience for people. Music, dance and food all share a rich oral tradition that is transforming daily for better and for worse. This piece will seek to illuminate and engage those connections and transformations.

Through this work, choreographer Ana Maria Alvarez will also challenge notions of how Salsa has often depoliticized Latinos, women and communities of color; reclaiming it as a complex and expressive form to give voice to those who have been silenced.The company will be incorporating a lot of what they studied and learned (in terms of the roots of Salsa) during their recent residencies in Cuba .

A work in progress of the piece was performed at CounterPULSE in San Francisco in November 2009. The piece will premiere in the spring of 2011. The company will be applying for NDP production support in April 2010--with touring subsidies available in 11/12. 
   
 
 
  SCHOOL PERFORMANCES AND WORKSHOPS
 
Through performances and interactive workshops students celebrate their connected histories and are inspired to find their own cultural voices. The company's performances run approximately 45 minutes. CONTRA-TIEMPO will begin by introducing themselves and the piece to the children, and lead a quick call & response activity. They will then perform their piece (there are several to choose from) and leave about 5 minutes in the end for questions and answers for the artists.

  
   
 
 
 
COMMUNITY WORKSHOPS
 
CONTRA-TIEMPO caters their workshops to the unique needs and interests of each community they work with. In all of their workshops they use Salsa, Afro-Cuban and their own Urban Latin Dance Theater movement technique. They explore the fundamentals and principles of leading and following combined with improvising in pairs, groups, and as individuals. In their technical dance workshops they pull from the Rueda (Cuban Salsa) and work with students around concepts of 'compassionate partnering' and movement metaphors. In their choreographic workshops, students will create movement studies designed to engage with, and push audiences to redefine and explore new ideas about dance partnering and what it means to work as community.