Bronx-Based Artist Alethea Pace presents "Between Wave and Water"
Company:
Alethea Pace
Bronx-based multidisciplinary movement artist Alethea Pace will present her latest work between wave and water, a performance walk rooted in reclaiming the history of the African Burial Ground in Hunts Point. The performance will take place on Saturday, September 28 at 12:30pm (rain date: Sunday, September 29), at Joseph Rodman Drake Park/Enslaved African Burial Ground (corner of Hunts Point Avenue and Oak Point Avenue) in the Bronx.
Combining dance, storytelling, and song between wave and water is a site-specific performance where fragments of ancestral memory guide the audience through layers of history and present-day realities. The journey begins at Joseph Rodman Drake Park, a site that holds the echoes of those who came before us. From there, the group will traverse through Drake Park, witnessing the collision of past and present on the way to Hunts Point Riverside Park. A communal exploration of memory, identity, and hope, grounded in the rich history of the land we walk upon, between wave and water is an invitation to co-create a space to honor ancestral legacies and envision liberated futures.
between wave and water is written and directed by Alethea Pace. Choreographed by Alethea Pace with the dancers. Music composed and arranged by S T A R R busby. Lyrics by Alethea Pace. The work is performed by nine extraordinary performers: Maria Bauman, S T A R R busby, Imani Gaudin, Darvejon Jones, Alex LaSalle, Alethea Pace, Maleek Rae, Katrina Reid, and Indigo Sparks.
Tickets for between wave and water are $5-$25.
Following the performance, Pace and her collaborators invite the audience to join them at Pregones/PRTT’s Stage Garden Rumba.
between wave and water is part of Alethea Pace’s Civic Practice Partnership Residency at The Met Museum and is created with support from the Bronx Council on the Arts’ Cultural Visions Fund, Bronx Council on the Arts’ Bronx Dance Fund, Loghaven Artist Residency, MAD Artist Residency at Modern Accord Depot, and the MAP Fund.
Photo: Imani Gaudin in between wave and water, photo by Whitney Browne.
About the Artists
Alethea Pace is a Bronx-based multidisciplinary movement artist committed to creating work in and with her community that is rooted in social justice. She is a 2023-2025 Civic Practice Partnership Artist in Residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a 2024 MAP Fund grantee. A recipient of the 2021 Dance Magazine Harkness Promise Award, her work has been presented by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, BAAD!, Works & Process at the Guggenheim, Pregones Theater, Dancing While Black, Danspace Project, New York Live Arts, and the 92NY, to name a few. She has received residency support from Loghaven Residency, TN, Keshet Arts, NM, and Modern Accord Depot, NY.
As a dancer, Pace has performed with a variety of choreographers and was a member of Arthur Avilés Typical Theatre from 2001 to 2008. She has been a collaborator in numerous multimedia community-centered projects including with Angela’s Pulse, Dancing in the Streets, and the Laundromat Project. In 2019 she worked as an associate producer on the award-winning documentary Down a Dark Stairwell, directed by Ursula Liang.
Pace trained at Mind-Builders Creative Arts Center in the Bronx, and has a BA in Urban Design from NYU and an MFA in Digital and Interdisciplinary Arts from the City College of New York. She is an adjunct professor at Lehman College. www.aletheapace.com
Maria Bauman (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist and community organizer from Jacksonville, FL, now based in Brooklyn. Bauman makes bold and honest artworks for her company, MBDance, based on physical and emotional power, insistence on equity, and experiments with intimacy. She is also co-founder of ACRE (Artists Co-creating Real Equity) and a core trainer with The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. The primary question guiding Bauman’s artmaking and her life is "How can we BE Together, Better?”
Bauman has recently been recognized for choreography and for dancing with two Bessie Awards, an Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center Fellowship, and two Maggie Allesee National Choreographic Center residencies. She is currently the 2024-25 Alvin Ailey Artist-in-Residence, a Mertz-Gilmore/NYFA dance award recipient, and the Queer Art Exchange Network ambassador artist on behalf of BAAD! Previously, Bauman danced with Urban Bush Women (UBW), and was UBW's Director of Education and Community Engagement before becoming the Associate Artistic Director. She has also danced with Liz Lerman, Makini Poe and Donte Beacham, Tatyana Tenenbaum, and Alethea Pace.
S T A R R busby (they/she/he/we—all pronouns said with respect) is a Black experimental artist who sings, acts, composes, educates, and is committed to the liberation of all people. A recent recipient of a NYSCA grant, S T A R R leads a music project under their name that will release a debut project in 2024 - Working Up A Surrender. She is also the lead singer of dance&b band People's Champs (www.peopleschampsnyc.com) which released their latest project, Process, in fall 2023. S T A R R has also supported and collaborated with artists such as The Gorillaz, Esperanza Spalding, Son Lux, X Ambassadors, Kimbra, Alice Smith, and Quelle Chris. Selected credits: Rest Within the Wake (James Allister Sprang, Baryshnikov Arts Center, featured soloist); (pray) (Ars Nova and National Black Theatre, singer, composer, and music director); The Beautiful Lady (La MaMa, Boris); On Sugarland (New York Theater Workshop, co-composer) 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Drama Finalist; Octet (Signature Theatre, Paula) Drama Desk award winner; Mikrokosmos, Sterischer Herbst (Graz), Nottingham Contemporary; The Girl with the Incredible Feeling, Spoleto Festival dei Due Mondi. All music available via Bandcamp and all streaming services. Love, gratitude and ashé to my blessed honorable ancestors, especially MME.
Imani Gaudin studied dance at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts where she was awarded a certificate of artistry in dance. She then graduated with honors from the Conservatory of Dance at Purchase College, SUNY, where she studied abroad at the Amsterdam University of the Arts, Academie Voor Theater en Dans. Gaudin has had the pleasure of performing works by Ohad Naharin, Netta Yerushalmy, Nicole Butler, David Harvey, Carmen Rozestraten, Marcella Lewis, Amos Ben-Tal, Rena Butler, Roderick George, Loni Landon, and Akira Yoshida. She has also worked with, performed, and collaborated with Kayla Farrish and Micheal Rice. Currently, Gaudin is a movement artist with TRIBE under the direction of Shamel Pitts. In March of 2024 she was a resident at Kaastsbaan Cultural Park, and she is also a Baryshnikov Arts Center and Pepatián Dancing Futures 2024 Artist-in-Residence. As the Artistic Director/Founder of Gaudanse, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, she has created a collaborative space for all artists to provide access and education to dance and the arts.
Darvejon Jones is a father, a bicoastal interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary dance artist, a performer, a Culturebotperforming arts contributor, a Movement Research and Performance Journal contributor, and a dance studies scholar. He holds an MFA in dance from Hunter College, a BA in dance performance and choreography and a minor in Japanese from San Francisco State University.
Alex LaSalle is a high priest (Tata Nkisi) to one of the oldest houses of Kongo-Cuban Palo in Cuba and now New York City—Batalla Sacampeño Mayombe. His teacher and mentor is Florencio Miguel Garzon (“Loanganga”) from Cuba. In addition to serving as a diviner and priest, LaSalle is also a specialist in hundreds of Afro-Cuban Kongo Mambo songs and rituals. He is fluent in the Afro-Cuban Bantu/Kongo language, and is an avid researcher and oral historian. He has presented lectures for educators and students at Yale, Columbia, New York University, Long Island University, and others. A teaching artist in the public schools of New York City, LaSalle is the founder and director of Alma Moyo Afro-Puerto Rican Bomba group, and a member of Grammy nominated Los Pleneros de la 21 and Grupo Folklorico Experimental Nueva Yorquino. He has performed with such groups as Roberto Cepeda’s Bomba Aché, William Cepeda’s Afro-Boricua, Felix Alduén y su Tambores, Pa’lo Monte, Nchila Ngoma Mayombe, and 21 Division.
Maleek Rae (they/them) great-grandchild of Jospeh Gilbert, hails from the East Side of Detroit, MI. They are a gender queer multidisciplinary rapper/writer/actor/producer. Rae is a graduate of the SUNY Purchase BFA acting conservatory. Their credits include The Best Man: The Final Chapters (Peacock), Random Acts of Flyness (HBO), East New York (CBS), and their recurring role on Law & Order: Organized Crime (NBC). Rae’s work can also be seen on stages throughout New York City, national commercials, video games, and their own original multimedia creations. Theater credits include Ghetto Alchemy: A Lunchroom Survival Guide (The Tank), 'Tia Pray A Sound(BTBF), The Bacchae (Classical Theatre of Harlem), and Messiah (La MaMa). Rae is a 2024 Gatekeeper Collective Learning To Love Fellow, 2023-24 Institute fellow with Target Margin Theatre, a 2024 EMERGE cohort member at Brooklyn Art Exchange, and a current member of LIT Council. “Work Hard and Pray Harder.” www.maleekrae.com
Katrina Reid (she/her) is a dancer and choreographer who crafts art projects rooted in improvisation, experimentation, and storytelling. Select presentations of her work include the Queens Museum, ISSUE Project Room, the Knockdown Center, Current Sessions, DoublePlus/Gibney Dance, AUNTS, and the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center. As a collaborator, she explores performance across dance, theater, music, ritual, and film. Learn more at katrina-reid.com.
Indigo Sparks (she/her) is a performance artist, choreographer, producer, and director based in Brooklyn. Her deep curiosity around the facilitation of community and transcendent possibilities of performance continue to be reflected in her creative work and processes. Sparks attended the University of the Arts where she trained in contemporary dance styles with choreographers such as Gerard and Kelly, Bobbi Jene Smith, Faustin Linyekula, Netta Yerualshalmy, Helen Simoneau, and Tommie Waheed-Evans, as well as vocal performance. In 2021 she became a Sundance Interdisciplinary Arts Grantee with her short documentary dance film it’s a matter of the soul followed by an assistant choreographer and understudy role for the touring off-Broadway musical Yemandja starring Angélique Kidjo. Her most recent performances include the interdisciplinary projects Little Amal, choreographed by Kayla Farrish, and PD(s)A, created by nicHi douglas for Lincoln Center. In 2023 she received a scholarship to GALLIM’s two-week Process Immersion residency with Pina Bausch company member Eddie Martinez, and began developing a new solo work titled Passarhino. Sparks continues to perform and produce her own work in addition to working as an associate producer for THE OFFICE performing arts + film for artists like William Kentridge, Francesca Harper, and others.
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