ANA MARIA ALVAREZ

(she/her)

Founding Artistic Director

BIOGRAPHY

Ana María Álvarez, a 2020 Doris Duke Artist and an inaugural Dance/USA Artist Fellow, is a prolific choreographer, skilled dancer, masterful teaching artist, and movement activist who has achieved multiple accolades for her dynamic works. Her thesis work explored the abstraction of Latine dance, specifically Salsa, as a way to express social resistance as related to the U.S. immigration battle. This work became the impetus for founding CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Theater in 2005 in Los Angeles. Alvarez and CONTRA-TIEMPO have continued to tour “joyUS justUS” (2017). This signature work is a radical celebration of humanity and the feminine, centering joy as a more loving and just future is imagined. Her work has been presented in theaters across the country and the world, including in Germany, Bulgaria, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile and El Salvador.  She was selected as the 2018 BiNational Artist in Residence, connecting communities in the Sonoran Desert, Phoenix (U.S.), Douglas (U.S.), Tucson (U.S.), and Agua Prieta (M.X.), through leading artistic workshops, collaborative performances, and public talks, and concluding with a performance at the U.S.-Mexico border. Alvarez and CONTRA-TIEMPO were also invited to represent the best of American Contemporary Dance Abroad through The Obama Administration’s U.S. Department of State cultural exchange program, produced by BAM, DanceMotionUSA. In the Fall of 2022, Alvarez was invited to join the UC San Diego Theatre and Dance Department as a tenured faculty member. In this exciting new chapter of her career, Alvarez, in collaboration with her colleagues and students, is imagining and designing a new future for embodied performance and practice at UCSD. 

Alvarez has been recognized with a number of awards and grants including NEFA’s National Dance Project, the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, LA City Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles County and the California Arts Council among others. She is the recipient of  the Mujeres Destacadas award from LA Opinion and a Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival Rainbow Award for her work with CONTRA-TIEMPO called “Agua Furiosa.” She received a Bachelor of Arts in dance and politics from Oberlin College and a Master of Fine Arts in choreography from UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children.

To see her full CV, click here.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I am a Los Angeles-based choreographer, dancer, educator, and organizer whose work traverses the worlds of social dance, political activism, community organizing, and art-making. My work is deeply inspired by my upbringing as a Cuban American raised primarily in the Southeastern United States by two labor union organizers and educators. I have had the privilege of studying and shaping my movement palate with master artists such as Katherine Dunham, Idalberto Bandera Sidó (Ballet Folklórico Cutumba), Jawole Willa Jo Zollar (Urban Bush Women), Ann Cooper Albright, Julio Jean, and Dr. Eleanor Gwynn. I have also traveled extensively throughout South America and the Caribbean to study, practice, and perform Tango and Afro-Cuban secular dances (Timba, Rueda, Rumba, and Gaga).

I received a Bachelor of Arts in Dance and Politics from Oberlin College and a Master of Fine Arts in Choreography from UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures. My thesis work, which explored “Latin Dance” (specifically Salsa) as a way to express social resistance within the US immigration battle, became the impetus for founding CONTRA-TIEMPO. In 2005, I founded CONTRA-TIEMPO Urban Latin Dance Theater to be a space where I could take on big social ideas on the concert stage, centering social dance forms and narratives of the African and Latin diasporas. 

The first work I choreographed, Against the Times, was completed for my MFA thesis project. It explores Salsa as a metaphor for social resistance, looking specifically at immigration battles along the U.S.-Mexican border. I Dream America, explores the tensions, commonalities, strains and histories between the Black and Latino communities, traversing the political landscape of immigration and Hurricane Katrina. Full Still Hungry explores food justice and the politics of consumption. Agua Furiosa takes on environmental justice, racism, and patriarchy. joyUS justUS looks at joy as a revolutionary practice grounded in community and human connection.

Since founding CONTRA-TIEMPO, I have received numerous awards, including a MAP Fund award in 2018 for the development of "joyUS justUS"; the New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project award in 2014 for the development of "Agua Furiosa" and in 2016 for the development of "joyUS justUS"; the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Fund for the Arts grant every year from 2013 to 2018; and the Dance/USA Engaging Dance Audiences award for "Agua Furiosa" in 2015 and for "joyUS justUS" in 2017. In 2016 CONTRA-TIEMPO was awarded the James Irvine Foundation’s two-year Exploring Engagement Fund for the development of "joyUS justUS". 

I have been recognized locally and nationally for my work by La Opinion, a Los Angeles-based new publication, as a “Mujer Destacada” in 2012, and by the Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival with the Rainbow Award in 2016. Most recently in 2019, I have been awarded Dance/USA’s Fellowship to Artists award and the Pieter Dancemakers Gran and the U.S. State Department selected CONTRA-TIEMPO to help develop, support leadership and to inspire youth through art as social action in El Salvador, Central America. In 2018, CONTRA-TIEMPO was selected to represent the U.S. at Spotlight USA Dance Platform in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, where we performed “Agua Furiosa”. Similarly, in 2014, we were selected as ambassadors to represent U.S. dance abroad by the U.S. State Department/ Brooklyn Academy of Music during the DanceMotionUSA tour in South America. In 2012, I was selected by the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs to represent Los Angeles contemporary dance at the Tanzmesse in Dusseldorf, Germany and at the Kindling/Fresh Tracks Choreographic Institute in Dusseldorf. 

I have been commissioned by the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts for "joyUS justUS" in 2017 (premiering to a sold-out theater at USC), by UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance for “Agua Furiosa” in 2016, and by The Music Center in Los Angeles for “Moves After Dark” in 2015.

In addition to my work with CONTRA-TIEMPO, I have always been engaged in a number of exciting creative projects outside of the company and continue to find new ways to partner, play and expand the vision of my work. I am frequently invited as a guest choreographer or artist in residence with dance companies and universities across the country. In July 2018, I was the guest choreographer for the Sarasota Contemporary Dance Company in Sarasota, FL. A few months earlier, I collaborated with award-winning composer, lyricist, and writer, Cesar Alvarez, to choreograph “NOISE”, a commission of The Public Theater and NYU/Playwrights Horizons Theater School. In February 2018, I had the honor of choreographing and lecturing as the artist in residence (alongside Liz Lerman and Natalie Diaz) at the Binational Artist Residency in Tucson, Douglas, and Phoenix, AZ and Agua Prieta, Mexico. Before my time with the Binational Artist Residency, I was an artist in residence at North Carolina State University, Shenandoah Conservatory, Arizona State University, Cal State University Monterey, and the University of North Texas Denton.

To learn more about my current and past projects, click here.

Connect with mE

Instagram: @movementartivist

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/movementartivist

Twitter: @movementartivst

Press

“represents the kind of socially aware contemporary work that only a few dance artists such as Bill T. Jones reliably provide…in heart, mind and soul this is the real thing!” - Los Angeles Times

“Alvarez is a force to be reckoned with” - curtainup.com, NYC

"(On Alvarez) A legit choreographic wunderkind with technical skills and theoretical foundations anchored in deep humanity... All of this is framed within a socially engaged and vividly creative approach to contemporary performance. Alvarez creates work that has deep roots and big ambitions." - CLture

“Alvarez is a rising star of the dance world.” - Backstage, NYC