Story | Thedancemovement

Jasmine Stanley has the appearance of a marionette, lurching her body into a seemingly impossible backbend before collapsing to the floor. As she immediately rises again, her body reels into a series of dizzying turns. At her feet, Bianca Medina and Nathieli Diaz-Martinez laboriously pull themselves upright. The trio of dancers move in time to a slow drumbeat overlaid with spoken word, whispers and shouts of “alien,” “illegal” and “refugee.” The dancers channel this drumbeat within their bodies and develop a common theme within the movement: a slow, undulating, hunched-over walk forward, almost as if they are attempting to hide themselves in plain sight. The walk is punctuated with crisp electric-like shocks of rapid, frantic movement.

After they finish, Ana Maria Alvarez stops the music, and the dancers, streaked with sweat, join her near the wall of full-length mirrors at the front of the dance studio.

Alvarez demonstrates her own rendition of the undulating walks and then gives the dancers notes on how to better channel the emotional topic of immigration into their own bodies.

Contra-Tiempo dancers Jasmine Stanley (in yellow), Nathieli Diaz-Martinez (in gray), and Bianca Medina (in black) rehearse their trio section of joyUS justUS, which focuses on the experiences of immigrants.

“It’s travelling, it’s moving, it’s migrating. It’s the feeling that migration is inevitable,” she says. Stanley, Medina, and Diaz-Martinez take time to practice with these notes in mind. They move with concentration and empathy, palpable within the tall, cerulean colored dance studio.

Next, Alvarez begins to address the various ways in which the dancers break this oscillating rhythm, peppering the trio with flame-like bursts of meteoric movement.

“It’s the migration…‘Shit everybody move, move, move, get down!’” Alvarez shouts as she crouches to the floor. She turns back to the dancers, “Sorry if I scared you, but that’s the whole purpose.”

Stanley, Medina and Diaz-Martinez are members of the Los Angeles-based dance company Contra-Tiempo Urban Latin Dance Theater, of which Alvarez is the founding artistic director. Contra-Tiempo is in the midst of touring a new work called joyUS justUS (pronounced “joyous justice”). In addition to this section of the piece, which is devoted to depicting the stories and struggles of immigrants and refugees, the rest of joyUS justUS tackles a plethora of other social justice issues, spanning from mass incarceration to police brutality.

Using dance and personal stories to make such bold statements on hot-button topics has become the company’s modus operandi. This kind of social action is especially relevant in 2019’s tumultuous political climate, but the story of dance and social justice begins many years in the past.

Katherine Dunham

Photo by Phyllis Twatchtman for the World Telegram via Creative Commons

The body of Ricardo Avalos, bruised and burned, is flung onto the stage, his neck adorned with a noose attached to a magnolia branch. It is January of 1951 and Katherine Dunham is premiering her new ballet, Southland, at the Teatro Municipal in Santiago, Chile. “Through the creative artist comes the need… to show this thing to the world, hoping that by exposing the ill, the conscience of the many will protest,” Dunham said in a speech directly before the dancers took the stage.

Southland follows the story of two young couples, one black and one white. After a sexual encounter, the white male, performed by dancer Lenwood Morris, grows aggressive towards the white female, performed by Julie Robinson, ultimately wounding her badly and leaving her for dead. Avalos, the black male, finds Robinson’s character and stops to help her. Robinson’s character accuses Avalos' of rape, and thus he is lynched.

The ballet, which forced audiences to confront the issue of racism in a shocking, visceral, and direct way, was jarring to the American embassy in Chile, which declared the work “anti-American.” Because of this, it was only performed once more, in Paris, and never made its way to U.S. stages.

Despite Southland’s lack of performances, Katherine Dunham, both on stage and off, is regarded as a pioneer of using dance to further the cause of social justice. Today, dance artists and dance companies are following in her footsteps. Contra-Tiempo is one such company.

“The more I learn about Dunham the more I understand what an incredible job she did laying the groundwork for a company like mine to even exist,” said Alvarez.

Alvarez founded Contra-Tiempo in 2005. The company’s work draws from her own story: that of a Cuban-American woman, growing up in the Southeastern United States as the daughter of two labor union organizers.

“I grew up a movement child, on the picket lines, inside of this idea of the politics of our nation being something that had to do with me and had to do with my future,” she said.

Activism, clearly in Alvarez’s blood, is also at the heart of the company she has built. As the dancers that make up the company sit in a circle on the hardwood dance studio floor, it is apparent that this activism runs in the veins of each performer that calls Contra-Tiempo their home.

Samad Guerra, one of the Contra-Tiempo’s dancers, has been making community connections through dance since his high school years in the San Francisco Bay Area. After a trip to Cuba, Guerra, who is adopted, began to consider his heritage and all the different identities he carries with him.

“I always struggled with knowing how to identify, being trans-racially adopted and also trans-culturally raised,” he said. “In Cuba, I saw all these Afro-Cuban folks speaking Spanish and it was an incredible experience. This idea of Afro-Latinidad really spoke to me and I was like ‘That’s who I am.’ I speak Spanish and I identify with this multicultural sense of self as a dark-skinned black man.”

After his travels provoked him to explore his own identity, he channeled this cross-cultural connection into dance by starting a Salsa dance club at his high school. This group attracted members from his school’s Black Student Union and the Latinos Unidos, who had never before collaborated. “We always had differences of opinion and didn’t see the connections that could be formed and fostered.” Guerra said. This early experience was instrumental in leading him to the work he does today.

Contra-Tiempo Founding Artistic Director Ana Maria Alvarez

"I grew up a movement child, on the picket lines, inside of this idea of the politics of our nation being something that had to do with me and had to do with my future." - Ana Maria Alvarez

Though the studio is windowless, with only the yellowish light emitted by the overhead fluorescents, the dancing is anything but dulled. Contra-Tiempo company members are rehearsing the opening section of joyUS justUS, an upbeat medley that highlights each dancer, one by one.

Dancer Charlie Dando takes center stage with a gravity-defying somersault, followed by a series of fast paced inversions and handstands, seemingly flipping the studio upside down. The dancers who surround him whoop and shout in support, keeping the beat within their own bodies, moving, swaying, and jumping as Dando has his moment in the spotlight. “Yeah, Charlie!” shouts Jannet Galdamez, skin and smile glowing as bright as the yellow sunflower clips that hold back her long, ebony hair. Stanley, clad in a yellow, cropped jacket, cheers in support from her position on Dando’s right side.

Diana Toledo then emerges from the group with a series of spins and jumps, her solo culminating with a whip of her blue tipped hair, followed by an energetic spin that sends her headband flying across the studio. Guerra emits a joyous laugh and Medina and Diaz-Martinez clap along to the beat of the music.

Contra-Tiempo company members rehearse the opening section of joyUS justUS, which highlights each dancer individually. Soloist Diana Toledo shows her personal dance style as her fellow company members cheer her on.

This moment of joyUS justUS certainly channels the element of joy, while also allowing the dancers to introduce themselves and tell their personal stories through movement.

The title of the piece comes from the words “joyous” and “justice,” stylized with a capital “U” and “S” at the end of each word. The “US” takes on a double meaning, both as a symbol of the United States and of the word “us”. This creative interpretation of the terms symbolizes three key concepts that the work explores: what joy means as diverse peoples in the United States, how joy and justice exist within each other, and the connection that can be found within joy.

“The title is a reflection of our vision for our communities moving forward,” Guerra said. “In [the opening section], all the dancers are onstage and expressing in our most authentic self who we are as movers.”

Just like the opening solos, dancers are welcome and encouraged to bring their own ethnic, cultural and familial backgrounds to the studio. Alvarez describes Contra-Tiempo as a “hybridized company representing lots of different voices” and the company becomes a vessel through which its dancers can explore their personal stories.

“Contra-Tiempo has encouraged me and kind of almost validated the things that I see in my family and the things that I see in our past,” Stanley said.

Alvarez describes the opening of joyUS justUS as a trick for the audience, priming them for an evening of joyous, upbeat rhythms and dancing, which is later flipped upside down as the work transitions to address the more hard-hitting, emotional topics. Similarly, working with dance as social justice — outwardly such a positive initiative — can also be home to struggle and hurdles to overcome. Representing the voices of diverse communities can bring to light a variety of societal barriers and prejudices.

In 1944, standing on the stage before an all-white audience in Louisville, Kentucky, Katherine Dunham announced that neither she nor her company would perform in the locale again until the theaters were desegregated. “Your management will not allow people like you to sit next to people like us,” she told the audience.

Although theaters are no longer officially segregated in America, dance companies such as Contra-Tiempo still have to navigate the micro-aggressions that come with representation of people of color.

Alvarez regularly struggles with performance venues wanting to book the company as either contemporary or cultural dance. This binary creates a distinction that Alvarez feels is a way of pegging the company and its dancers as people of color.

Ana Maria-Alvarez (front) gives rehearsal notes to Contra-Tiempo dancers (left to right) Diana Toledo, Jannet Galdamez, Samad Guerra, and Bianca Medina.

"Ana Maria is just the epitome of dance that is meant to change the world that she is a part of." - David Gere

Alvarez, of course, is not only an activist; she is also an artist. Just like her company is hybridized, she is too. “Very much reflected in the work is the hybrid identity of a Cuban-American; somebody living in the United States on very many dividing lines that I don’t feel like I’m either this or that,” she said.

Having danced Salsa most of her life, Alvarez is also trained in jazz, ballet and tap. In high school, she was introduced to Afro-Cuban, Afro-Haitian, and Dunham technique. Though this was the first time Alvarez encountered Dunham, this was not the last time she would take inspiration from the dance pioneer.

David Gere, a dance historian and professor of World Arts and Cultures and Arts Activism at University of California Los Angeles, is familiar with both the work of Dunham and Alvarez. “Ana Maria is just the epitome of dance that is meant to change the world that she is a part of,” Gere said.

The similarities between these two artists are not lost on the company dancers, either. “Ana Maria is extremely influenced by Katherine Dunham,” said Guerra. “It’s been a part of some of our training and just [Dunham’s] work as a human being has influenced the direction of the company and Ana’s vision for the world.”

While known as a seminal dancer, choreographer, and activist, Dunham was also an anthropologist and one of the first African-American women to earn a Ph.B. (bachelor of philosophy with focus in social anthropology) from the University of Chicago. During her time at the University of Chicago, Dunham travelled through the Caribbean studying the dance styles, ways of life, cultures, and traditions of the native peoples. In 1938, after this extensive fieldwork, Dunham returned to the United States and went on to introduce Afro-Caribbean dance styles to American audiences, melding the European dance aesthetics typical in the U.S. at the time with the traditional dance styles learned during her travels. “She was very much interested in bringing cultural dance forms to the concert stage, but with a bit of understanding of where these cultures were rooted,” Alvarez said. “She had given modern dance — or a more hybridized version of dance, period — [a way] to exist and be expressed on the concert stage.”

Today, Alvarez and Contra-Tiempo have evolved this ethnographic research to suit the needs of the company and the 21st century. While many in the dance world refer to this type of work as “outreach,” Alvarez prefers the term “community engagement.”

“It’s funny because in our field the word outreach is used a lot,” she said. “But to me, I always feel like that word is the description of reaching out for one place versus this idea of listening and learning from each other.”

In February of 2019, four company members spent a week in El Salvador as part of an initiative for the U.S. Embassy. During their stay, the dancers worked with 40 “youth organizers,” local Salvadorian youth from 20 different local schools who were selected based on merit and leadership abilities. The youth leaders participated in the workshop to learn community building and organizing tactics that they could then bring back to their schools. Contra-Tiempo plans to return to El Salvador in June for a full performance of joyUS justUS in which students from five of the 20 participating schools will be chosen to perform with the company.

“It’s exciting to be working with young people who are going to be the next generation of Salvadorian leaders,” said Alvarez.

Alvarez and the company dancers spent a great deal of time in rehearsal preparing for the trip to El Salvador. The company members and their artistic director talked about the history of U.S. involvement in El Salvador and how, for some of the people they would be working with, even mentioning the U.S. could be painful.

Visiting dancers brushed up on their Spanish and the company made several changes to their repertoire. A piece titled Revolution was changed to La Historia in order to not sound as though it makes light of the South/Central American struggle against U.S. imperialism.

Samad Guerra plays the cajon in a joyUS justUS rehearsal.

"Our work there is not just about teaching, but also learning in the process." -Samad Guerra

Contra-Tiempo dancers (left to right) Bianca Medina and Nathieli Diaz-Martinez in rehearsal for joyUS justUS.

This respect and sensitivity towards other cultures and differences in perception helps Contra-Tiempo dancers connect viscerally with the communities that they work with.

In El Salvador, Guerra, who has played the drums since childhood, began to play the cajon, a box shaped percussion instrument, and attracted the attention of a small boy. “From the moment I sat down with the cajon and started playing he was attached at my hip,” Guerra said. He plans to bring a drum as a gift for this student when the company returns to El Salvador in June.

“Our work there is not just about teaching, but also learning in the process,” Guerra said. “They shared some of their traditional dances and forms of music. It really was an exchange.”

Here too, Dunham has been a guide. In 1935, she received two fellowships to study dance in the Caribbean. She first travelled to Jamaica, where she lived in a remote village for several months, learning from and living amongst the Jamaican people.

“One thing that I have been inspired by myself is Katherine Dunham’s role as, on the one hand, a choreographer, but on the other, an anthropologist,” said Gere. “She had one foot in academia. She had one foot in her community. Actually, she has maybe more than two feet because she had more than one foot in that community.”

Contra-Tiempo’s approach for community engagement is much the same. The company hopes to continue working with the community in El Salvador, ultimately developing a yearly visit modeled after their annual summer dance intensive, Futuro, held in Los Angeles. “The plan is to stay connected and continue to work with the community that we were with,” Guerra said.

While Contra-Tiempo has engaged with communities in countries across the globe, they remain firmly rooted in Los Angeles. joyUS justUS, which took approximately two years to complete from genesis to premiere, began in South Los Angeles, with what the company calls sabor (flavor) sessions. Alvarez describes these workshops as “weekly community dance jams.” Through the sessions, Alvarez and the company members shared and heard stories of the struggles and joys experienced by communities of color in this area of Los Angeles.

“We basically would get together and create and experience joy,” Guerra said of the process. “A lot of joyUS justUS came about because we were imagining what joy could be in dance.”

The sabor sessions also took the form of choreographic labs, in which the Contra-Tiempo dancers would perform short excerpts of joyUS justUS and then invite community participants to create their own movement based on the work and prompts given by Alvarez. The participants then joined Alvarez and company members in what Alvarez describes as a “huge story circle where people share stories connected to the work.” Many of the central themes of joyUS justUS came from these story circles.

“That whole process wound up continuing to move the direction of the piece,” Alvarez said. “The piece definitely was rooted in joy and in justice. Every single time we would talk about joy and every time we would talk about justice, every time we would talk about injustice, or connection, people’s stories were about their mothers and about grandmothers and about the matriarchs.”

Though the final product of joyUS justUS only features stories from the lives of Alvarez and the company members, this theme of mothering played a key role in the stories Contra-Tiempo decided to tell.

The trio between Stanley, Medina, and Diaz-Martinez draws upon the experiences of immigrants, but also stems from the story of one company dancers’ mother and her immigration to America.

Guerra also found connection in joyUS justUS through a section that describes the adoption story of Luca, Alvarez’s son. On the day Alvarez adopted Luca, he was in the hospital, hooked up to a breathing machine. Guerra, having also been adopted, felt an immediate connection to this story. In the piece, Guerra sits center stage while Alvarez’s story emerges from the soundscape playing over the speakers. As she recounts Luca’s adoption day, Guerra allows the words to wash over him. His dancing echoes both his emotional reaction and the connection he has made with Luca and Alvarez through shared stories and movement.

Ana Maria Alvarez (far left) in rehearsal with (left to right) Bianca Medina, Jasmine Stanley, and Nathieli Diaz-Martinez. The three dancers are rehearsing the trio which incorporates the story of one company dancers' mother and her immigration to America.

“I was adopted when I was three and I was in an incubator for a period of time because I was in drug withdrawal,” he said. “ I don’t remember that experience but it’s a part of my story.”

Allowing the dancers to put themselves into the work, not only physically with their dancing, but emotionally as well, is another central and overarching theme of joyUS justUS.

“It really was about the ‘us;’ it was about the ‘we.’ It was not about ‘joy me,’ it was ‘joy us.’ It was the whole idea of the nosotros, the collective,” Alvarez said.

"It really was about the 'us;' it was about the 'we.' It was not about 'joy me,' it was 'joy us.' It was the whole idea of the nosotros, the collective." - Ana Maria Alvarez

The sound of laughter emanates like an echo down the slick, concrete hall outside the dance studio. The studio door bursts open, bringing light, color and life to the stark landscape of a Sunday afternoon at the otherwise empty Nate Holden Performing Arts Center.

Inside the studio Alvarez, Diaz-Martinez, Medina, Galdamez, and Stanley are seated in a small circle on the hardwood floor, just finishing up their usual pre-rehearsal meeting. After their laughter dies down, resurfaces, then dies down again, each woman makes her way to standing, stretching and positioning herself to dance.

Galdamez makes her way to the back of the studio, where several suitcases stand stoutly on their sides. Opening the first, she begins to carefully remove and arrange a series of intricate and colorful garments: costumes still packed away from a recent tour.

At the front of the studio, Stanley, Diaz-Martinez and Medina break into a series of turns, as if a gust of wind has suddenly picked them up like a pile of autumn leaves. The turns stop as suddenly as they began, and the dancers change dynamics, returning to the slow, undulating walks that ground this trio. The next five minutes are made up of this calculated, deliberate movement, stippled with bursts of energy, almost urgent, taking the form of jumps and turns, seemingly breaking the boundaries of both gravity and time.

Glowing with perspiration, the dancers once again congregate near the mirrors to hear Alvarez’s thoughts and corrections. Just before they return to dancing to explore the newest set of notes, she provides them with a final thought. “When there is a rawness to it is when it really gets you,” she says to the dancers, gesturing with one finger to her heart.