IMPRESSIONS: Alethea Pace's Site-Specific "between wave and water"

between wave and water

African Burial Ground/ Drake Park and Hunts Point Landing

Written, directed, choreographed and performed by Alethea Pace

Created in collaboration with the dancers Maria Bauman, Imani Gaudin, Darvejon Jones, Alex Lasalle, Alethea Pace, Maleek Rae, Katrina Reid, Indigo Sparks , S T A R R busby,

Music composed, arranged, and sung  by S T A R R busby

Front of house/ Post Mixing Engineering by Adrian Martinez  // Costume design by Mauricio Barrera

The last surviving image documenting the location where Africans, who were enslaved by the Hunt, Leggett, and Willet families, were laid to rest in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx is a 1910 photograph titled "Slave Burying Ground.”

Alethea Pace’s significant site-specific “between wave and water” recently served as a reclamation of the history of this African Burial Ground. Located at what is now called Drake Park, the site still houses the plots of the slave owning families with no obvious markers of the enslaved people’s burial location.

Devised as a performance walk, the work used storytelling, song, and movement to take us on a deep listening tour across local land and in and out of time. Starting at the Burial Ground/Drake Park, the work also traversed street and loaded us onto a school bus to Hunts Point Riverside Park for a final uplifting look towards the future. Pace continues her ongoing practice of healing historical harm in this transformative work of collective re/membering. The ancestors buried (unacknowledged) under the ground were called into a shared dream of redress.

Imani Gaudin in "between wave and water." Photo: Whitney Browne
 

The event had been re-scheduled to September 29th due to rain the day before, however, there were still downpours, sometimes as if summoned from above by the incantations of a majestic S T A R R busby, as Ghost. Despite the rain, a substantial group gathered to witness and participate in singing and moving together in community. Having seen the work at BAAD! while still in process, the day carried distinct echoes while delivering a much more potent brew of presence, magic and integration from a fully committed cast of outstanding performers.

Cast of "between wave and water." Photo: Whitney Browne
 

Imani Gaudin initiated a passage across the upper bank of Drake Park, upon the ground where the enslaved Africans are buried. As we watched her sinuous, lush progression our backs were to the fenced-in official burial sites of the enslavers, a very meaningful staging. In a beautiful collapsing of time, a truck with massive speakers slowly cruised down Drake Park South for a highly contemporary machination against an ancient evocation.

Cast of "between wave and water. Photo: Whitney Browne
 

S T A R R, drummer Alex Lasalle, and the dancers moved us to the corner of the park where we were to meet a Trickster, played by a charming and commanding Maleek Rae. His Trickster was a beguiling shapeshifter, playing across truths and lies in a kind of new archiving, singing “If I’m lying, i’m dying.” We followed him, the dancers and the magical music truck away from the park and to a street corner at which point dancers sitting on milk crates rose and singing made their way across the street. As they encircled S T A R R, who had been carrying us along with a splendid dignity, the vortex of history seemed to sweep around all of them. Once again, the urban setting broke apart divides between the ancient and recent.

 Maria Bauman and Maleek Rae in "between wave and water." Photo: Whitney Browne
 

Maleek’s Trickster got the entire group into a parked yellow school bus where he performed a mercurial, shape-shifting monologue in the small aisle. The text for the show was written by Alethea, and while too lengthy to share in entirety, a tiny sample reveals the deft crafting of tone and tempo that ran throughout the entire work.

Take back what’s been taken

The whole sea within me, won’t never be thirsty

Draw a line in the sand

So ocean thinks it can cross me 

The whole pond up, I’ll fill every cup

But before I drink though, 

what I’ll do first, (Snaps to shapeshift themself in to a seductress)

is wash

I’ll make myself so sweet 

Not even ocean can even resist me

Wash my mouth out, til water jumps in

Alethea Pace, S T A R R busby and audience in "between wave and water." Photo: Whitney Browne
 

After a brief passage on the bus around the Hunts Point Produce Market, we were dropped off for our final location by the river. As saturated as the day had been in serious Yemayá orisha energy, to feel ourselves at the water’s edge brought the experience into a full state of cellular regeneration. After a formidable duet with a hauntingly powerful Maria Bauman, we were led to a circle of grass. I felt the earth under my feet. Alethea sliced through the space as if forging new pathways of possibility for the past/future while S T A R R circled her in a stately procession, establishing a gravitas amidst the arriving buoyancy. In a final moment, Dahlia Jones (dancer, Darvejon Jones’ daughter) is held aloft surrounded by Indigo Sparks, Katrina Reid, and Imani Gaudin. Offspring and ancestors co-mingle, looking up to the sky, looking down to the earth. 

Indigo Sparks, Katrina Reid and Imani Gaudin holding Dahlia Jones in "between wave and water." Photo: Whitney Browne