Photo courtesy of John Michael Kohler Arts Center
Salsa Rueda Fundamentals! with Ana Maria Alvarez, 2019
Ana Maria Alvarez has lived a life immersed in politics and dance. Her father, of Cuban descent, was a labor organizer. She started dancing at age 5, participating in the social salsa dancing her family enjoyed. Her grandfather, in fact, was her first dance partner. So it’s no surprise, really, that Alvarez majored in dance and politics at Oberlin College, and that she formed a dance troupe, the work of which promotes a social message.
Alvarez and her troupe, Los Angeles-based CONTRA-TIEMPO Urban Latin Dance, will appear at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center on Saturday, Nov. 16, at 7:30 p.m. The diverse mix of dancers will present joyUS justUS, a piece that celebrate the power of joy to battle injustice. The work, and the name of her dance company, have roots in Alvarez’s MFA thesis in choreography, which she earned from the University of California–Los Angeles’s Department of World Arts and Cultures.
Photo courtesy of John Michael Kohler Arts Center
Ana Maria Alvarez, (left) artistic director of CONTRA-TIEMPO Urban Latin Dance Theater, dances with Levitt AMP audience member, June 20, 2019.
“Through my thesis work, I began exploring salsa as a mechanism to challenge gender constructs and immigration policy under Bush—this piece was called CONTRA-TIEMPO,” Alvarez said in an interview last year. She calls her thesis research “pivotal for me in defining and clearly articulating my values and beliefs as an artist/choreographer.”
In 2005, Alvarez established CONTRA-TIEMPO as a nonprofit dance company that uses the movement of the human body as a vehicle for social change. “I am interested in how our bodies have the capacity to teach us to connect and be compassionate as human beings, and how the act of performance can transform us as individuals and communities,” Alvarez has said in previous interviews. “Through the use of gesture and pedestrian movement, culturally specific ‘social’ dance, and a contemporary concert dance aesthetic, I am able to craft work for the stage that speaks to an increasingly multifaceted and global audience.”
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The evening contains three parts. At 7 p.m., Alvarez will offer a free, pre-show discussion of joyUS justUS and her work. The performance follows at 7:30 p.m., and afterward, all are invited to a dance party.
For more information on and tickets to CONTRA-TIEMPO’s Nov. 16 performance at JMKAC, click here or phone 920-458-6144. Tickets are $15/$10 for JMKAC members. The Arts Center is at 608 New York Avenue in Sheboygan.
