This month’s open community repertoire class will focus on the upcoming premiering work, Roots of Loving Us. Renowned dance artists holly johnston of Responsive Body and Ana Maria Alvarez from CONTRA-TIEMPO, both women of color, mothers, activists, and community leaders,  join forces to create Roots of Loving Us. This innovative, evening-length multimodal choreographic work uses somatic healing and ancestral technologies of dance, music, and imagery. It explores origin stories shaped by biological uprooting, unchosen separation, and the re-rooting of bodies, altering family tree DNA. The dancers of CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Theater bring this work to life through their embodied knowledge of afro-latine movement practices, focusing on narratives of adoption, foster families, bioadaptive families, queer parents, single-parent families, and diverse birthing experiences. Through deep community collaborations, cross-sensory experiences, and innovative production elements, ‘Roots of Loving Us' is a powerful testament to lives transformed by the enduring choice to love forever.