Ana María Alvarez didn’t always imagine herself ending up back on campus. “I’ve had a love–hate relationship with the academy,” says Alvarez, the founder of CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Theater who joined the University of California San Diego’s Theatre and Dance Department as a tenured faculty member in late 2022.

Artists are using dance to shed light on issues surrounding incarceration, the school-to-prison pipeline and the justice system as a whole. Some are teaching dance and choreography directly to inmates. Others are using their personal experience as the foundation for concert works addressing these complex, and sometimes controversial, themes.

For Ruby Morales, dance is both a form of resistance and a radical expression of joy. Watching her mix cumbia, breaking and contemporary in CONTRA-TIEMPO’s joyUS justUS is a lesson in lightness, gravity, surrender and, oftentimes, bliss. In her kinesphere, the floor is not just a landing surface, but an active space that propels her […]

This season, The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts is shining the spotlight on Los Angeles–based dance companies. For the first time in its history, the venue, located in Beverly Hills, has programmed solely local companies for the 2019–20 dance season. While Los Angeles boasts a world-class concert dance scene, local companies have historically […]

While there are more women making dance than ever before, the question still swirls: Do they have the same programming and mentoring opportunities as their male counterparts? This spring, Ballet West and the University of Southern California are choosing to tackle the question head-on, with performances and residencies that focus on female dancemakers. National Choreographic […]