Spirit Led Me to My Futuro

Our newest company member, Aminah Jackson, writes about her experience in CONTRA-TIEMPO's Futuro Summer Dance Intensive, and about getting the call to join our professional company.

I was first introduced to the Urban Latin Dance Theatre in January of 2017, when I participated in a Sabor Session workshop CONTRA-TIEMPO held at Community Coalition.

A few months later I learned they were holding auditions for two dancers that would be a part of their touring company.  Everything in my head told me I wasn’t nearly ready to audition for any one’s dance ANYTHING. I hadn’t been in class nor was I in “dancer shape”. But then I remembered how I felt—that overwhelming JOY I had experienced—dancing with them in that one workshop, and I decided to go for it.  

The audition was unlike anything I had ever experienced. It felt like a workshop that I have never been fortunate enough to take.  We were challenged not just as dancers or movers, but as individuals who were being called to be our complete selves, incorporating our unique experiences into the space as creative artists. I was no longer worried about competing with other auditioning dancers, but could focus on letting my own self shine.  

After leaving that space I anxiously awaited a call back. Five dancers would be selected to continue on to CONTRA-TIEMPO’s Futuro Summer Dance Intensive, the final portion of the audition. A day later I was pleased to hear the great news! 

Although the Futuro Summer Dance Intensive was only two weeks long, it created an incredible space for breakthrough, growth, pain, and healing.  I had no idea what to expect upon my first day of walking into the beautiful space of LMU, I just knew I was on a mission to rediscover the dancer in me and recreate her as more mature artist. 

The program was filled with excited faces across the color spectrum from different walks of life, from different states, and even from different countries.  The one thing I was sure of after the first day was that I had just joined a powerful community of passionate artists, and I felt absolutely at home. 

Each day we trained in styles birthed from the African Diaspora, some familiar and some which were foreign to me.  What I appreciated most, however, was the company members’ capacity to share the history and context of each dance form, before and throughout the class. For them, it wasn’t just abut how well we could execute the movement, but if we understood the true significance and could translate it onto our bodies.  

My absolute favorite part of the program was our Artist as Social Action classes.  Each session was different from the last, challenging us to share more, dig deeper within ourselves, be vulnerable, and trust our community within the space as a support system.  The power that came from those short sessions, the hearts that poured out, the minds that opened up, the pain that was felt, the undeniable truths that were shared left us all incredibly impacted.  Every day I felt like I was in tears, either from participating in the healing process of a fellow brother or sister, or from my own personal stuff that was being stirred up and bubbling to the surface.  

In those two weeks I felt so connected to our shared humanity, and I truly understood what it meant to participate in a community.  Yes, I grew in my technique of specific dance styles, yes, I built relationships, but most importantly I felt reunited with the meaning of our existence; to share and be demonstrations of unconditional joy as expressed uniquely through our artistry. 

A few days after Futuro’s final performance at the Vision Theatre in Leimert Park, I accepted an invitation to join CONTRA-TIEMPO as a touring dancer! I immediately felt an unshakable peace. It had confirmed that I had made the right decision those weeks prior, to follow my spirit that led me to what is now my new, creative home, CONTRA-TIEMPO Urban Latin Dance Theatre.

Aminah leads the line of guerreras in the Futuro Summer Dance Intensive showcase

Building Community in South L.A.

Brianna is a former member of CONTRA-TIEMPO's Futuro Junior Company, and has been interning with us all summer through the L.A. County Arts Commission's Arts Administration Internship Program. Here she reflects on her experience. 

Though based in Los Angeles, CONTRA-TIEMPO hasn't always spent a lot of time here, because the company has been fortunate to be on the road touring and sharing work nationally. That's changed over the last year, as the company has begun building a home in South Los Angeles.

Oftentimes, artists are berated for being contributors to the gentrification process. Even some of the most well-meaning arts organizations have set up shop in neighborhoods like South LA and found themselves facing stark resistance from community members. I mean think about it, if someone were to move into your home uninvited and unannounced, how would you react? Given recent threats of gentrification in South LA neighborhoods like Vermont-Knolls and Leimert Park, CONTRA-TIEMPO knew that in order to do it right, genuine and holistic community engagement would be a crucial step.

This is why CONTRA-TIEMPO decided to work with the Community Coalition to build community specific, context-driven engagement strategy that focuses on grassroots organizing, intentional community building, and forming genuine relationships with people in the neighborhood. Through canvassing the community and hosting Sabor Sessions (free weekly dance classes for the South Los Angeles community), CONTRA-TIEMPO has been able to grow some really rich relationships with community residents.

Witnessing and facilitating this beautiful process as CONTRA-TIEMPO’s Community Engagement Intern has been both an honor and a privilege for me. After over a month of hard work, South Los Angeles is finally starting to feel more like a home (and that's even with me being from South Los Angeles!). It’s not uncommon to walk around the neighborhood, see familiar faces, and strike up conversation with folks.

One story that reassures me that we are on the right track is of one of our Sabor Session participants who I initially just started talking to in passing, as she and her granddaughters were walking down the street outside of the Community Coalition building. I invited them in to dance with us, and she seemed wary of coming in. But then one of her granddaughters shouted, “Grandma! Grandma! We want to dance!” She looked into her granddaughters’ pleading eyes and finally decided to come in and see what the class was all about. Even as she walked into the building, the hesitation was still very noticeable in her face. “Only a few minutes,” she told her granddaughters as they ran to the front of the room. As it turned out, a few minutes turned into 30 minutes, which eventually turned into an hour.

Gradually, I saw the expression on her face become less and less resistant, until finally, she was smiling cheek-to- cheek. Since then, she and her granddaughters have come every week to dance and build community with us.

It is stories like this that make me aware of the transformative power of dance. The fact that she went from a reluctant passerby to a fully engaged "regular" is proof of how powerful it is to be given a space to have fun, build community, heal and express yourself.

I can honestly say it has been such an exciting time for me to take part in the beginning of what CONTRA-TIEMPO hopes to be a long-standing relationship with the South Los Angeles community, and I look forward to the weeks (and years) to come.

FACILITATING FIERCENESS: CO-LEADING A DANCE RESIDENCY AT NCSU

Facilitating FIERCENESS: Co-leading a dance residency at NCSU, by Jannet Galdamez

A few weeks back I had the opportunity alongside my colleague Bianca Medina to co-teach a one week residency at North Carolina State University with a group called the Panoramic Dance Project. Panoramic is a college-based dance company consisting of 13 beautiful dancers whose only outlet of dance on campus is through this company. They are all majoring in other areas, such as business and science, and they make time outside of their normal class schedules to commit to their dancing. 

This was my second time getting to lead a residency and share the work of CONTRA-TIEMPO in this intense format, and it's absolutely one of favorite things to do. Getting to co-facilitate the experience with my colleague, Bianca Medina, made it extra special. This was Bianca’s first time leading a residency, and because we both had really beautiful college experiences—having been positively impacted and inspired and having gotten to work with guest artists—now to be able to “sit on the other side of the table” brought it all full circle.

During this residency we set a 20-minute excerpt of our current touring work Agua Furiosa on the students. This excerpt included our big ensemble pieces: Join the Movement, A Masters House, No Nos Moveran, our Rifle Piece, and ending with Like Water for Justice. We used the CONTRA-TIEMPO creative process method in our work: we shared personal stories in Council circles, dove into trust-building exercises, held conversations that helped set the dancers’ intentions in their movement, and taught choreography in a way that allowed the dancers to personalize the excerpts and make them their own. 

It was beautiful to get to experience this group move together, support one another in their roles, and take their connection as human beings to another level. It was incredible to feel and to see how much these dancers were craving this work. They shared with us how certain movements and phrases were bringing up all sorts of connections to their personal lives and to what is going on in the world. This truly was showing up through their bodies, in their movement and how they were working as an ensemble—truly listening to and seeing one another in and out of the pieces. 

If I could choose one word for this week-long residency it would have to be PERSEVERANCE… And this really was our kind of like our theme each day. Every single one of these dancers was so full of determination, purposefulness, and intention. It was an honor to witness.

Check out the dancers in action. FIERCE!!

88 Likes, 8 Comments - Bianca Medina (@__biancamedina) on Instagram: "➡️Check out these ferocious dancers‼️ CONGRATS NCSU Panoramic Dance Project! I had the pleasure of..."

Voices del Camino: [Formerly] Undocumented and [Now] Unafraid

On the series: Voices del Camino is our series of stories and reflections from the company, while on tour. El camino, in Spanish, literally means "the road"; but el camino is also the journey that we're on towards witnessing, creating, and sharing the beauty and complexity of humanity, and towards transforming our world through love and movement.

Bentonville, AR | [Formerly] Undocumented and [Now] Unafraid, by Isis Avalos

We performed Agua Furiosa at the incredibly beautiful Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, as part of their series, “The Art American Dance”.  The performance itself was in a very intimate setting that was practically floating over water (very fitting for Agua's theme!).   

Isis (standing on a bucket) as Caliban 2 in Agua Furiosa

After the performance we had our post- show Q&A.  A man sitting in the second row with his children beside him asked the first question, and it was directed towards me. He said he noticed that my character (Caliban 2) was going through turmoil, and he saw glimpses of water, but he also wanted to know if there were other stories connected to this character.  Ana Maria passed the microphone to me and I all of the sudden felt nervous—not because of the idea of speaking, but because of WHAT I was going to speak about. 

I introduced myself by stating that I was an undocumented child brought into the U.S. by my parents when I was 7 years old, and because of that, there was a direct connection between ‘the wall’ of buckets and the pedestal that my character stands on.  I mentioned how, ironically, when Ana Maria originally created this piece just two years ago, the phrase of ‘building a wall’ was not as big of a topic of conversation in America as it is now. And since I, like many others brought to the U.S. as young children, identify as Americans because we were raised here, we are now fighting against this wall just as Caliban 2 is in Agua Furiosa.  

Isis in front of an exhibit about undocumented immigrants at "Nuevolution" at the Levine Museum of the New South in Birmingham (another stop on our tour)

In that moment I felt bold and proud to have said that publicly and in a way that the audience could connect to Caliban 2 but also to MY humanity as a Mexican-American immigrant.  Once the Q&A was finished I had a group of young women come up to me and thank for me sharing my story about being undocumented. I thanked them for accepting my story because it validates my existence in this country (internally, I felt touched and was choking up). I stared at them smiling and they stared right back at me. It’s those moments when you get quiet and you both understand the connection – no words are needed. That is humanity. This was the last show of Agua Furiosa in 2016. The year started off by me not mentioning my once-undocumented status, but now that IS how I introduce myself. 

I realized that who I am, has everything to do with the way I dance and why I dance.  Agua Furiosa is politically (environmentally- racially) driven and it is also very personal. I think it is necessary now more than ever to be ‘a voice’ for those who have similar stories to mine in order to give permission for others to share theirs.  I am thankful to be given the platform to be unafraid to tell my story. 

Isis, as featured on the Proud Mexicans site. #WeAreProudMexicans