Film by Erin Cooney uses dance, poetry to spotlight environmental hazards in L.A. neighborhoods

Ashna Madni | September 15, 2025

Take a deep breath, and imagine what’s happening inside your body. Air fills your lungs, passes into your bloodstream and moves through your heart to reach every cell in your body.

Now imagine if that air was so contaminated with toxic pollutants that you could smell it, taste it and even see it. For many people living in Los Angeles, that experience is a daily reality.

Erin Cooney, an adjunct assistant professor in the department of European languages and transcultural studies, is bringing attention to the crisis through a dance-based video project.

“Aire Libre” sheds light on the toxic air and soil pollution that has affected lower-income communities of color in Los Angeles who live amid heavy industry, busy freeways and other polluting facilities. After a two-month run this spring at the Torrance Art Museum, the film is now scheduled for a UCLA campus screening, Oct. 9 at 4 p.m., as part of an open house for students and faculty interested in community- and publicly engaged scholarship.

Cooney has taught courses on the subject of ecological crises since 2020, but her interest in the topic intensified the following year. While teaching a UCLA Design Media Arts course on environmental justice in Los Angeles, Cooney discovered East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice.

An eye-opening tour

East Yard empowers residents of East Los Angeles, Southeast Los Angeles and Long Beach to advocate for environmental protection of their neighborhoods. Through the organization, Cooney learned more about the disproportionate environmental dangers for Los Angeles’ marginalized communities and took a tour of hazardous sites adjacent to homes, parks and community spaces in and around the I-710 corridor. During that tour, the idea for “Aire Libre” came into focus.

“So many people in Los Angeles don’t know these things are happening,” Cooney said. “It was a disturbing revelation to me and made me realize my own ignorance about the topic. There are Angelenos, our neighbors, suffering daily from this level of pollution, and it’s not front-page news. It has become normalized.”

Erin Cooney

So, in 2022, Cooney recorded interviews with several East Yard members about how pollution in their neighborhoods has affected their families. Some of the interview subjects went on to take writing workshops led by poet Rocío Carlos, giving them another forum for sharing their stories.

Cooney expanded the project further in 2023 and 2024, forging collaborations with CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Theater and vocalists Carmina Escobar and Joung-A Monica Yum. The result is “Aire Libre,” a 30-minute film that weaves together dance, spoken-word poetry and vocalization to highlight the inextricable link between the environment and the human body.

“We wanted to challenge the notion that our bodies are disconnected from our environments,” Cooney said. “‘Aire Libre’ asserts that we are completely intermingled and interconnected with the air, the soil and our environments to the most intimate levels — our lungs and our bloodstreams. There is no boundary between our bodies and our environments. Dance was integral to delivering this message.”

Cooney, serving as the film’s director and producer, brought on a cinematographer, Mason Broadway, to film CONTRA-TIEMPO dancers at the iconic 6th Street Bridge in Boyle Heights, in Bandini Park beneath the 710 Freeway in Vernon, and on residential streets of East L.A. and the concrete banks of the Los Angeles River. Ana MarÍa Alvarez, director of CONTRA-TIEMPO, collaborated with the company’s dancers on the choreography, in which the performers extend, contract and throw their bodies, with power, grit and grace. Their raw performances are complemented by the haunting vocalizations of Escobar and Yum and Carlos’ resonant narration.

The power of collaboration

Broadway and Cooney collaborated to edit the footage together with a screenplay written and narrated by Carlos — a blend of original poetry and adapted narratives from the East Yard oral history interviews and writing workshops.

For Cooney, working with community partners — not merely showing their stories, but also involving them in the production — was an essential part of the endeavor.

“We wanted to foreground the stories of the folks who are impacted by these issues in their own words and using their own voices as much as possible,” she said. “But this was the first project I’ve done that was so heavily collaborative, and it was alchemy.

“The beauty of collaboration is that you can make something that is larger than any individual collaborator. We could all share in the vision and evolve it together.”

Later this fall, Cooney plans to project the film onto building exteriors in industrial sites in the affected communities. She said she hopes the project makes more Los Angeles residents aware of the enormous impact of the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels, and in particular, the toll they exact on marginalized communities — while also spotlighting organizations like East Yard.

“For the activists who are trying to fight for the health of their communities, there is a lot of heartbreak,” Cooney said. “But they don’t stop because every incremental change makes a difference. I’m in awe of how the folks at East Yard have managed to come together to better understand the mechanisms of government regulation, study the actions of the polluters and utilize the law to protect themselves and their communities.”

The Oct. 9 screening will take place in Royce Hall 314. (Admission is free, but advance registration is strongly recommended.) After the film, Cooney will take part in a panel discussion with Alvarez and East Yard members Honey Bizarro and Guadalupe “Lupe” Valdovinos. A reception with light refreshments will follow.