Friday, December 10, 2010

TOURING UP A STORM!

We have been touring up a storm this past month and a half - right after finishing an incredible tour to St. Paul, MN where we performed and did a week long residency at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts. We worked with middle school students, teen mothers at the AGAPE School, I lectured on Salsa and Gender for a community college class (Intercultural Communication), Arco Iris (Afro-Puerto Rican Community Center where they teach, dance and play Bomba), several master classes at Ordway and at the Performing Arts HS next door! It was a whirlwind of a week! Not to mention, we danced with the Grammy Award winning band TIEMPO LIBRE. Once we got back from this amazing experience, we stayed in LA for a week and headed back out to NYC. There we
performed for the Celia Cruz Bronx HS of Music! This is our company's first partner school in NYC! We hope to find a few more next year - and thanks to a three year grant (2010-2011 is the first year) we will be in the Bronx for the next two years! So excited to have an excuse to come back to New York. The students of Celia Cruz WORKED it and really inspired and moved us with their talent, skill, energy and SABOR! Now I am in Dallas, TX (the rest of the co. is still in LA) representing CONTRA-TIEMPO at the 25th Anniversary conference for the the NPN (National Performance Network). Already it has been an inspiring few days - to share the space with such and incredible group of artists, activists and cultural workers! I feel excited about taking on more leadership. I am committed to stepping outside of just making sure CONTRA-TIEMPO is thriving - but fighting and standing for the ARTS to THRIVE in this country. I know it can look bleak out there -but we have to believe that the arts will prevail and continue to fight for our society to get a clue... and realize that the world won't make sense without artists! And we AREN'T going anywhere!

Monday, November 8, 2010

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CHECK OUT OUR NEW ARTS ED VIDEO!

Not good at this blogging thing!

So something I have learned this year is... I am not a good Blogger... I think about blogging a lot - but I never seem to actually sit down and write (online) about what is happening... moving through my mind... I feel like I am in a constant state of sharing what I/we/CONTRA-TIEMPO does with the world - through our performances, workshops, newsletters, emails, facebook, personal conversations and phone calls -but it would be great for folks to get an inside look - and also for me to flush out ideas, thoughts and movings - through this forum... it is a thought - something to work towards. Bill T. Jones is so good at it - I love reading his ideas and thoughts and have gained so much from how generously he shares himself... So thank you Bill T. - you are inspiring me to share myself more!
So much has happened since I last wrote! Over a year and a half ago!! We performed at Lincoln Center and Jacob's Pillow in August 2009; shared our work with 1000's of screaming (with joy) teenagers at Royce Hall (UCLA) and ASU Gammage (outside of Phoenix); we took our second delegation of artists to Cuba (our third one will be in 2012 - stay tuned for more info on that!); we were invited to be a part of the Performing Diaspora Festival in CounterPULSE, to begin creating new work that will be debuted in its' entirety next year 2011.
I have been reading, thinking, writing, and moving around this idea of consumption versus nourishment - our relationship to food as a metaphor for how dissatisfied we are as human beings - always searching for something to fulfill us - answer inside of us... and how this desire to be full and complete is so connected to gender, to globalization, oppression of others and to societal control over nature... the piece has finally called forth a title: FULL.STILL.HUNGRY
I am thrilled and inspired to be working on this new work and am dreaming choreography an staging ideas at night! This is always my sign that I am moving in the right direction! My family (immediate family) went to Cuba - my father - after 50 years returned to his patria - which was one of the most moving and beautiful experiences of my life. To be a part of this homecoming - but also to make sense of my affinity with this incredibly rich and complex pais...

Last year we celebrated 5 years of being a company at a hugely successful 5th year anniversary Gala at the Los Angeles Theater Complex (LATC) downtown. We raised almost $12,000 to complete two full residencies at 186th Street Elementary and the Foshay Learning Center in South LA -both schools who are committed to working with us but don't have the funding - and now they do! We had the pleasure of performing in Reston, VA and at Dance Place in Washington, DC through a NPN residency. We immediately felt at home at Dance Place and look forward to going back in 2011 to share FULL.STILL.HUNGRY

There is so much more to tell - This fall we completed one of the most moving and inspiring residencies we have done until now at UNC Wilmington. We will also be returning there with FULL.STILL.HUNGRY - Cesar G. and I were there for two weeks and ran workshops, master classes, panel discussions around issues of immigration, race and gender politics. We also worked intensely with a group of students at Bradley Creek Elementary School - teaching them Casino Rueda - and using dance as a tool to build community and empower them as individuals! During the last week the entire company flew out and we completed the residency with a packed performance! Click HERE for a review of the performance! This residency really actualized our potential as community artists - allowing us to do what we do best - connecting with various different and dispersed communities and bringing them together - truly building community where it is needed most!

In the midst of all of this touring success our arts education programs have been SOARING! We have 24 schools currently with CONTRA-TIEMPO Arts Ed programs this year in Los Angeles County, and we are working with the Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music in NY - expanding our programs to the east coast! Next week we will be at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in Saint Paul, MN and will be heading back to the east coast (NYC) in December!

I promise - I give you my word - that I will write more often - meaning at least once a month... there is so much happening and all happening so fast that I will regret not having a blow by blow account for future reference -and I really am committed to sharing this amazing journey with the world! Nos vemos!