CONTRA-TIEMPO: ¡azúcar!

Dance @ The Wallis is generously made possible by Koni Rich CONTRA-TIEMPO is a Los Angeles-based activist dance theater company known for socially conscious work that fuses Salsa, Afro-Cuban, hip-hop, and contemporary dance with theatrical storytelling. Under the direction of founder Ana Maria Alvarez, and in collaboration with an ensemble of artists including Afro-Cuban Master Teacher Kati Hernandez, the company creates work that invites connection, reflection, and collective imagination. In ¡azúcar!, CONTRA-TIEMPO traces the complicated history of sugar, from its origins as a healing plant to its entanglement in the transatlantic slave trade and its enduring impact on Black and Latino communities. Through athletic, emotionally charged movement, the dancers unearth ancestral memory, confront systems of oppression, and celebrate resilience, joy, and the sacred feminine. The experience begins with performers moving through the audience, transforming the theater into a shared, immersive space where the line between spectator and participant dissolves. Here, the audience is not separate from the story, but inside it — part of its rhythm, memory, and its healing. This is truth-telling and celebration in motion.