CHOREOGRAPHIC LABORATORIES

Often the choreographic process is a transformative experience for the artists involved, moving through a journey of research, discovery, uncovering personal connections to the content of the work. During the creation of CONTRA-TIEMPO's evening-length work, Agua Furiosa, in 2016, Artistic Director, Ana Maria Alvarez, decided to begin the creative development process with a series of interactive, site-specific performances and creative laboratories rooted in the themes of the work. This practice evolved into what we now call our choreographic labs, and from the beginning were always planned in partnership with local community organizations. The experience of sharing and play was inspired by Alvarez's desire to engage a larger community of participants in this experience of art making and her belief that these experiences of exploration and sharing would build meaningful relationships and resilience across geographic and economic divides. 

For Agua Furiosa, the labs were open to the public and connected to specific bodies of water in Los Angeles. Participants witnessed work in progress, created their own movement/theater-based work around themes explored in the piece (race, exile, injustice, water, drought, and upheaval), and shared their own stories connected to those themes in council circles. Council is an age-old practice that involves bringing people together in a circle to bear witness and share authentically. The company was trained to lead council by the Center for Council. The labs provide a rare opportunity for community art-making and for "holding space" to hear each other’s stories. Many of the stories and movements in the final production of Agua Furiosa came directly out of these choreographic labs, so they were extraordinarily rich for our creative process. As importantly, they were rich for community-building. When Agua Furiosa's development process came to an end, we knew we had to continue the labs. We have adopted the choreographic lab process as one of our core community engagement practices.

In CONTRA-TIEMPO's newest work, joyUS justUS, we have begun to share the choreographic lab experience while on tour and have found that it continues to help us evolve and grow the work as well as engage local community in the work itself.

CONTRA-TIEMPO was honored to have received a Dance/USA Engaging Dance Audiences grant to develop our choreographic lab engagement work. Later we received the California Arts Council's Artists Activating Communities grant to continue to develop this work in partnership with Community Coalition. 

We are excited as we continue to grow and deepen this work. We look forward to documenting and sharing our findings with other organizations, practitioners, and community members as we continue to build the powerful practice of community-engaged art-making. 

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