Performing Roots of Loving Us with CONTRA-TIEMPO at Sierra Madre Playhouse in Sierra Madre, CA.

Renowned dance artists holly johnston of Responsive Body and Ana Maria Alvarez from CONTRA-TIEMPO, both women of color, mothers, activists, and community leaders, join forces to create Roots of Loving Us. This innovative, evening-length multimodal choreographic work uses somatic healing and ancestral technologies of dance, music, and imagery. It explores origin stories shaped by biological uprooting, unchosen separation, and the re-rooting of bodies, altering family tree DNA. The dancers of CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Theater bring this work to life through their embodied knowledge of afro-latine movement practices, focusing on narratives of adoption, foster families, bioadaptive families, queer parents, single-parent families, and diverse birthing experiences.