With the Times

Contra-Tiempo is an LA-based modern dance company infused with Latin dance and a social consciousness, the work of Ana María Alvarez and a devoted collective of dancers, musicians, and other artists. Contra-Tiempo is also Spanish for “Against The Times,” but having heard the urban outcry of this company’s work for the first time last night, I’d say they’re quite in tune with the times—and perhaps even redirecting them. At the incredible converted bank building that is The New Los Angeles Theatre Center (better known simply as The New LATC) on Spring Street downtown, Contra-Tiempo brought out three rep pieces and one new work for a single evening of dance.

“I Dream America”, a 2008 set of seven dances, opened the program. With its exploration of “the tensions, commonalities, strains, and histories between the Black and Latino communities,” it brings to the table both the racial tension of C-T’s (and our) city home and the literal moving and shaking one can do to loosen it. There are b-boy and square dance steps, salsa and solos. In the final progression of exhausted, changed, and empowered movers across the stage, the layers of the piece cohere: the video images with the “I Been ‘Buked” unison, the angry voices with the outstretched arms of the people on stage and, it seems, the people they represent. And that is perhaps the most moving aspect of C-T: they are people. They are incredible dancers making work in a very difficult time for making work, but more than that they are the faces of awareness and outreach in Los Angeles and elsewhere.

The remainder of the program was varied, from the new tongue-in-cheek Fosse-isms of “Plastico” to the sweet duet “Al Alba Ache” and “contra-tiempo/against the times”, a 2006 work that seems to be the company’s signature. Sound credits include the words of Cesar Chavez, Lolita Lebrón, and Pablo Neruda, as well as the impressive sound design of Cesar Alvarez, whose work was used throughout the program. The closer brought to mind again what I enthusiastically scrawled in the margins some time earlier, between clapping and shouting (it’s encouraged): “These are people! Who dance!” Plenty went wrong, production-wise: a late start, a pesky projector logo, a runaway water bottle on stage (twice). But production value isn't the point. The supreme dance technique isn’t the point. (That’s plastic, really.) This is a broad scope of topics and outcries, but that isn’t the point, either. The heart of it, the point I can see, is generating and sustaining the courage to make dances about the facts and the frictions of Los Angeles, tapping into its races and its communities at large. The Latin dances at C-T’s movement base make a foundation for social interaction. Much the same, the subjects the company attacks makes a firm foundation for vivid awareness in Los Angeles.


LADB