On Wednesday afternoon, July 7, 2021, as the afternoon sky was just beginning to threaten the rain destined to begin that evening, the health-checked audience at Jacob’s Pillow filed slowly into the dell facing the Henry J. Lier stage.
Bright ribbons of cloth draped over the backs of seats, and gorgeous giant banners, sizzling with color and pattern, hung from the trees. We felt surrounded by exuberance and beauty. The dance had not even begun, and yet we already felt as though we were a part of it.
Ana Maria Alvarez founded Los Angeles-based Contra-Tiempo in 2005 to be a company in which art and activism are intertwined. Often feeling as outsiders in the dominant world of their art, Contra-Tiempo invites its diverse company of artists to collaborate in creating material for their dances. They live out their values, not only in the thematic content of their work, but in the creative process of the company itself.
And what a company it is! The dancers are supple, expressive, acrobatic, and, without exception, a thrill to watch, and to listen to as they speak and sing their messages.
As we settled onto our festooned benches, an unseen male voice, clearly Native-American, began melodically chanting, accompanied by rhythmic rattles, invoking the ancestors who inhabited this land before us, before Jacob’s Pillow, before the settlers who came from far away.
Slowly, dancers in bright sparkling colors, flowers in their hair, moved through the aisles, ending with some on, and others in front of, the stage, maintaining not only the solemnity of the incantation, but also the audience’s sense of physical connection to the dancers.
With dancers assembled, the performance, “joyUS justUS,” continued with an invocation of gratitude to our native forebears, an assertion of connection, “You and I become us,” and thanks for the elements that sustain us:
The earth, Mother Tierra, “our skin reflects the many colors of who she is and who we are;”
Water, “ancestors running seeds in the rivers of our existence,”
Fire, “thanks for the struggle”
and Air, “we all inhale spirits and exhale resilience.”
These words of summons led the audience into a performance marked by the interposition of reflections on history and justice and a sheer exuberance of being. Through words and movement, “joyUS justUS” proclaims that the most powerful resistance is joy.
The dancers reached out to the audience, with call and response, encouraging informal interaction, erasing the boundaries that divide us, that “We are Us. “
The dance vignettes ranged from comic to heartbreaking to defiant and uplifting, calling out the many ways in which people are marginalized and oppressed, as well as the many ways people can resist and move into joy.
The recorded jazz and Afro-Caribbean infused music electrified the dance, bringing a sense of improvisation and abandon within the boundaries of the disciplined artistry that these superb dancers clearly possess.
Toward the end of the program, a solo dancer, Ruby Morales, prefaced her solo with a recounting of a Micmac elder’s description of their ritual of restorative justice. Rather than punishment, the community surrounds the accused to assure the person of his or her goodness and to welcome the person back into society.
As an instrumental ensemble played “This Land Is Your Land” over rapid chord changes and a Spanish language vocal, Morales danced a joyful solo celebrating the philosophy that we are all, the joyous and those who mess up, members of the community of “We.”
The program concludes with these simple, wise, and wonderful words, to a standing, swaying, and clapping audience:
“Your breath is an act of resistance.
You have the right to speak in a Spanglish.
We have a right to live in the in-between.
You have a right to wear a hoodie and not to get killed.”
