Ana Maria Alvarez (M.F.A., Dance, '05)
CAP UCLA Presents the World Premiere of CONTRA-TIEMPO's Agua Furiosa
For CONTRA-TIEMPO Founder and Artistic Director Ana Maria Alvarez (M.F.A. Dance, ’05), dance is a perfect medium for community engagement and activism: “When you think about activism, you think about that idea of putting your body on the line. You're putting yourself on the line, putting your ideas and your opinions out into the world, and that’s what dance does,” she says. And that’s what Alvarez does with CONTRA-TIEMPO’s Agua Furiosa, which premiered on January 14 at the UCLA Glorya Kaufman Dance Theater presented by the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA.
Agua Furiosa forces audiences to consider issues of race in the United States. Alvarez presents a counter-narrative to Shakespeare’s The Tempest that focuses on the mother-witch character, Sycorax, and her son, Caliban. Alvarez chose to give a voice to these two characters whose identities are largely shaped – and in Sycorax’s case entirely shaped – by conversations between the men around them in Shakespeare’s tale.
CONTRA-TIEMPO "Agua Furiosa" Choreographic Lab #5
In the development of Agua Furiosa, Alvarez further pushed the idea of giving a voice to the voiceless by organizing a series of “choreographic labs” throughout Los Angeles. CONTRA-TIEMPO invited community members to participate in conversations and movement practices centered on the themes of the work. “Whenever we create work,” Alvarez says, “we all go through an incredible transformational process, and we grow, and we learn, and we expand, and we change.” For this work, with its emphasis on giving a platform to individuals who are written out of narratives, Alvarez thought, “how amazing would it be if we opened up our process, and made it something that other people could connect with, participate in, and be a part of.”
In fact, it was this commitment to engaging with communities and confronting social and political issues through her choreography that lead Alvarez to UCLA. The UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance (WACD) is unique in that it encompasses dance and global arts and culture, with an emphasis on arts activism and social justice. “UCLA was the only university I applied to for graduate school because I was very certain that I was meant for this department.”
In her graduate program Alvarez was constantly choreographing and refining her practice. “The discipline and practice of generating work with that intensity was incredibly valuable and really gave me my legs as a choreographer,” she says. At UCLA, Alvarez learned to articulate and defend her artistic vision, gained important practical skills that helped her establish her company and produce performances, and formed important professional relationships.
Collaborating with UCLA students, faculty, and alumni has been integral to CONTRA-TIEMPO since its founding. In Agua Furiosa, for example, Alvarez included two fellow WACD alumni: d. Sabela Grimes (M.F.A. ’09) is the composer and sound designer, and Samad Guerra (B.A. ’15) is one of the dancers. “[UCLA] is a fertile ground for collaboration, for people to cross pollinate ideas and connect across genres and across fields,” she says. “I always say my job as an artist is to play, my job is to create, and my job is to experiment. In a big research university like this, that's what people are doing. They're in their own fields, they're playing, they're figuring things out, and they're experimenting. That's really what's going to give us the capacity to move the world forward and progress as a people.”
Agua Furiosa runs through January 24. For more information and to purchase tickets, click here. Read the L.A. Time's review of Agua Furiosa here.