About this Artist

CONTRA-TIEMPO is a Los Angeles-based Activist Dance Theater company founded and directed by Ana Maria Alvarez. For over 15 years, the company has been dedicated to transforming the world through dance. Through their unique and dynamic dance-theater work, both on and off stage, CONTRA-TIEMPO builds community, facilitates dialogue, and moves us to imagine what is possible in the world.

CONTRA-TIEMPO's work exists in the ‘in between' and boldly embodies a complex palate including Salsa, Afro-Cuban, improvisation, contemporary and abstract dance theater, to create an invigorating blend of physically intense and politically astute performance work. While their performances are consistently electrifying, what sets the company apart most is its unique relationship to its own community. CONTRA-TIEMPO is, much like the community it reaches, a tapestry. CONTRA-TIEMPO takes an active and uncompromisingly radical approach to the ways artists function within society. Its company members are professional dancers, artists, immigrants, teachers, activists, organizers, and movers of all types living and working in Los Angeles. Each company member's lives, expresses, and struggles within the varied and infinitely complex political and personal landscapes that Alvarez seeks to address through her work.