Ana Maria Alvarez

(she/HER)

Ana María Álvarez, a 2020 Doris Duke Artist and an inaugural Dance/USA Artist Fellow, is a prolific choreographer, skilled dancer, masterful teaching artist, and movement activist who has achieved multiple accolades for her dynamic works. Her thesis work explored the abstraction of Latine dance, specifically Salsa, as a way to express social resistance as related to the U.S. immigration battle. This work became the impetus for founding CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Theater in 2005 in Los Angeles. Alvarez and CONTRA-TIEMPO have continued to tour “joyUS justUS” (2017). This signature work is a radical celebration of humanity and the feminine, centering joy as a more loving and just future is imagined. Her work has been presented in theaters across the country and the world, including in Germany, Bulgaria, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile and El Salvador.  She was selected as the 2018 BiNational Artist in Residence, connecting communities in the Sonoran Desert, Phoenix (U.S.), Douglas (U.S.), Tucson (U.S.), and Agua Prieta (M.X.), through leading artistic workshops, collaborative performances, and public talks, and concluding with a performance at the U.S.-Mexico border. Alvarez and CONTRA-TIEMPO were also invited to represent the best of American Contemporary Dance Abroad through The Obama Administration’s U.S. Department of State cultural exchange program, produced by BAM, DanceMotionUSA. In the Fall of 2022, Alvarez was invited to join the UC San Diego Theatre and Dance Department as a tenured faculty member. In this exciting new chapter of her career, Alvarez, in collaboration with her colleagues and students, is imagining and designing a new future for embodied performance and practice at UCSD. 

Alvarez has been recognized with a number of awards and grants including NEFA’s National Dance Project, the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, LA City Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles County and the California Arts Council among others. She is the recipient of  the Mujeres Destacadas award from LA Opinion and a Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival Rainbow Award for her work with CONTRA-TIEMPO called “Agua Furiosa.” She received a Bachelor of Arts in dance and politics from Oberlin College and a Master of Fine Arts in choreography from UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children.

Email: anamaria@contra-tiempo.org

Ruby morales

(she/HER)

Ruby Morales is committed to equity, facilitating life-affirming spaces, and cultivating community relationships rooted in reciprocity, trust, and love through life and her artmaking. She is a dance artivist investigating culturally informed teaching methods and her relationship with movement as a bgirl and Mexican influenced cumbia Sonidera. After receiving a BFA from Arizona State University she completed Urban Bush Women's Summer Leadership Institute, The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond's Undoing Racism Training, and is continuously training in breaking and learning about hip hop philosophy/theory. She is currently working with internationally renowned creative Liz Lerman, CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Theater, and Tucson, AZ based choreographer Yvonne Montoya. She recently toured her grant funded evening length show, Breaking Pachanga locally in Arizona. She is a 2021 National Association of Latino Arts and Culture Advocacy Leadership Fellow, and a 2021 Intercultural Leadership Institute Fellow. 

Email: ruby@contra-tiempo.org

Emily Goulding

(she/her)

Operations Manager

Emily Goulding is a Nicaraguan/Irish cultural worker, writing educator, and former dancer who has built her career at the intersection of art, activism, and community. Earlier in her career, she performed on stages including the Ford Amphitheatre and Highways Performance Space and has worked with leading national activist arts organizations such as Amplifier, Self Help Graphics & Art, Grupo de Artistas Latino Americanos (GALA) Theatre in Washington, DC, and Cornerstone Theater Company.

Today, Emily brings that artist’s sensibility to the thoughtful stewardship of nonprofit organizations—strengthening the administrative, financial, and fundraising foundations that allow cultural organizations to thrive. Throughout her career, she has championed cultural work that critiques, inspires, teaches, preserves memory, and reimagines what is possible, from dance and theater to public art, publications, and mixed-media projects.

Emily has admired CONTRA-TIEMPO from within LA’ community arts orbit for years and is grateful to now contribute to its work. She has a master's degree from Georgetown University and a bachelor's degree from UC Santa Cruz, and lives in Northeast Los Angeles with her husband and sons.

IG: @emilygirasol

Website: https://www.emilygoulding.com

email: emily@contra-tiempo.org

Jannet galdamez

(she/HER)

Jannet Galdamez is a dance artist born, raised, and based in Los Angeles, CA. Her love for dance and music began at a very young age through social, street, family settings. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Dance and minor in Education from the University of California Irvine June of 2012 training intensively in jazz, improvisation, modern and ballet. Jannet has been studying salsa for the last 17 years, Afro-Cuban dance, music, and culture for the last 10 years and she continues to dive deep in her studies of various dance forms inside the Latin and African Diaspora.  

Jannet has danced with Paula Abdul, Spanish Rock Band Mana, Prince Royce, Keaira LaShea's Dance Fitness Series, Maite Perroni, El Dasa, Luis Coronel, Chiquis Rivera, Ozomatli, La Sonora Santanera from Mexico City, Los Angeles based Cuban Roots Band Changui Majadero, Chicano Band Las Cafeteras, and the 2017 ON YOUR FEET Broadway Musical Promo Cast. She has also volunteered and worked closely as a teaching artist and behind the scenes with The Floor Improv Night and The Open Floor Society, a 501 (c) non profit organization connecting the youth with a community of professional artists, engaging in multi-cultural dance and music, using improvisation to build confidence and self empowerment. 

Jannet is currently rehearsal director, teaching and dance artist with CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Theater while simultaneously dancing with Kimbambula Cuban Dance Ensemble directed by Cuban Master Kati Hernadez and touring with Spanish Guitarist, Roni Benise’s Emmy Award Winning World Music and Dance Spectacular. Jannet continues to blossom in her versatility as a dance artist... always grounded with the beat of a drum and with deep gratitude for her teachers, mentors, and elders. She is passionate about her journey - a journey guided by love, balance, connection, gratitude and rooted in celebrating and uplifting cultural and ancestral roots, community-building, self-discovery and self-empowerment through dance.

Email: jannet@contra-tiempo.org

Holly JOhnston

(SHE/HER)

holly johnston is a movement artist, dance educator, and somatic specialist whose work lives at the intersection of choreography, embodied research, and community-based wellness. She holds an MFA in Choreography and a BA in Dance, and has taught extensively in higher education, including appointments at the University of California–San Diego, California State University–Fullerton, Loyola Marymount University, Chapman University, and California State University–Long Beach.

Johnston’s artistic practice is grounded in somatic phenomenology, movement analysis, and trauma-informed pedagogy, approaching dance as both an aesthetic inquiry and a social practice. As founder and envisioning director of RESPONSIVE BODY, she leads body liberation practices that integrate movement research, care ethics, and collective healing. Since 2022, she has served as Somatic Ecologist with CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Theater, providing embodied wellness support, creative collaboration, and social practice development for artists and communities.

Her choreographic work has been commissioned by universities, festivals, and professional companies across the U.S. and internationally, supported by organizations including NEFA/NDP, NPN, the Department of Cultural Affairs–Los Angeles, and the Culver City Cultural Affairs Division. A former Dance Magazine “25 to Watch” artist and Lester Horton Award recipient, Johnston continues to research how movement can cultivate belonging, disrupt systems of body-based oppression, and generate cultures of care through artistic practice.

email: holly@contra-tiempo.org

jesse ocampo

(she/they/siya)

Embodied Organizer, movement archivist, and communications associate

Jesse is a Bay Area-raised, Los Angeles-based dance educator, choreographer, and creative activist grounded in the values of accessibility, compassion, and resiliency. Growing up in a creative household - with a father who worked as a DJ and tattoo artist - Jesse found an early love for music, dance, and Bay Area Hip Hop culture that continues to root their movement practice today.

Jesse began teaching in the arts at age 12 as a competition dance choreographer and recreational dance instructor, and has spent 15+ years since as a dance educator specializing in non-profit arts education, early childhood development, and radical pedagogy. Jesse currently serves as the Recreational Dance Specialist with the City of Carson. Jesse is also the Creative Director and Founder of PaperCrane Project, an ethnographic, choreography-based creative collective bringing accessible arts wellness programming to Long Beach, and previously performed professionally with the Walt Disney Company's Live Entertainment.

Jesse holds a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology with a minor in Dance, and a Master's degree in Applied Medical Anthropology, from CSULB. Their training spans ballet, contemporary, jazz funk, and hip hop foundations, with a more recent practice of connecting to ancestry through Filipino dance.

Jesse first found their way to CONTRA-TIEMPO as a community member during the “Roots of Loving Us” workshops in March 2025, and knew immediately they had found their movement home. After performing in “Direct Address” choreographed by Ana María Alvarez and premiering at the Ford in Fall 2025, Jesse joined the company as an Embodied Organizer and Movement Archivist at the beginning of 2026, and now stands as the communications and social media associate.

IG: @hess_da_mess

email: jesse@contra-tiempo.org