With support from the California Arts Council, CONTRA-TIEMPO will continue our long-standing community-led work in South Los Angeles, leading free dance classes for the residents of this low-income Black and Spanish-speaking neighborhood, to help strengthen participants’ sense of community connectedness, joy, and overall well-being.
Our primary programming can be viewed through our 3 programmatic trunks: artistic production, community engagement, and dance education and leadership development. Firstly, our artistic production involves the creation and presentation of Afro Latin Activist Dance Theater works on both national and international platforms. Secondly, our community engagement initiatives focus on collaborating with various communities, particularly those from low-income and communities of color in LA and across the nation, to co-create movement and generate dialogue about issues and themes embodied in our creative work. Lastly, our commitment to dance education and leadership development is manifested through our programs such as our FUTURO Summer Dance Intensive, the Artivist Leadership Institute, and school residencies. All three trunks are undergirded by our company’s overall philosophy of art as social action. Since 2005 we’ve engaged them in many ways, always being responsive to our communities while steadfastly upholding our mission and values. We intentionally engage diverse audiences, cultivate dancer leaders, and center stories not traditionally heard on the concert stage, using our engagement process to inform and continuously re-fuel our creative process.