Agua Furiosa

CONTRA-TIEMPO is a multilingual and multicultural Los Angeles-based activist dance and theater company directed by choreographer Ana María Alvarez and dedicated to transforming the world through dance. Bringing water on stage, Agua Furiosa revisits The Tempest, by William Shakespeare, with a counter-tale that draws from Oya, the Afro-Cuban orisha, or deity of wind and storms, who embodies the spirit of change, transition, and chaos. The performance thus highlights postcolonial and ecological issues related to water and the Ocean. It addresses many of the ways in which our rapport with the Ocean is tangled with a history of social violence and thus reveals how blue, i.e. aquatic, issues are permeated with brown and black undercurrents that ripple through the performance. Tapping into the empowering energy that flows from dancing in and with water, Agua Furiosa confronts harsh realities of race in the United States of America. Its choreographic style is deeply influenced by dance technique and movement work rooted in Afro-Latin Diaspora and by the company members’ unique skill sets and personal narratives. Creative collaborators include the original cast of Agua Furiosa in addition to sound designer d. Sabela grimes, vocalist Pyeng Threadgill, lighting designer Masha Tsimring and dramaturg Michael Garces, all of whom have let water seep into their creative processes in tangible ways. Working with water has moreover led the company to explore dancing with certain props – in addition to the water that at times soaks the stage, the dancers perform with plastic water bottles, buckets, and umbrellas.

Led by artistic director and choreographer Ana María Alvarez, the company has created various pieces over the years that are tied to water as an element imbuing the content as well as the creative process, while being materially present through different media. Ana María Alvarez and her company have thus produced two dance films involving water. One is titled Submerge and was co-created with film maker Marcus White. The company also produced Somos Agua, a dance film created in collaboration with their LA community, working at the intersection between water’s creative potential and equitable urban planning. Again referring to Yoruban tradition and the Latin and African diaspora, the piece calls on Mama Agua, or Mami Wata – which some represent as a mermaid, or sometimes see as a water spirit, or again as an embodiment of the river – and Yemayah, the Ocean orisha.  — B. Meillon