A 1910 photo titled “Slave Burying Ground” from the Museum of the City of New York documents the site in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx where Africans who had been enslaved by the Hunt, Legget, and Willet families were buried. Now called Joseph Rodman Drake Park, the site contains the plots of the enslavers, but there is no trace of those enslaved who are also buried there. Alethea Pace’s “between wave and water,” presented recently at BAAD!, honors the memory of the ancestors buried there in a potent passage of works that resist the urge to erase America’s history of slavery. It is a purposeful, hefty juxtaposition of care-fully crafted encounters, movement through space as memorial practice, memorial practice as malleable time conjuring, and the ghosts who precede, join and follow our days.
Upon entering the burial grounds surrounding BAAD!’s converted church theater, we are instructed to hold the memory of the ancestors interred at Drake’s Park with us on our travels as we are separated into smaller groups of 8 or so people and given roses. The program lists Bill Swan, Aunt Rose, Robin, Hannah, Abram, Jenny, Tobe, Hannah, James, Fair, Hercules, George, Jacob, Ginne, Ginne, Tammes, hester, Abigail, Robin, Agness, Abram, titus, tobe, Lilly, Gin, Dick. Luce, Ginne, Cuffee, Lew, Dick, Sharp, tite, Ben, Bett, Lill, Harry, Lew, Jo, and Bell. The always compelling STARR Busby, here a Ghost, greets our group and chooses two audience members to sit at reflection stations located to the sides. There, the selected viewers sit across from Darvejon Jones and Alethea who have mirrored headpieces in front of their faces. There is an exchange about ancestors at the periphery while Starr instructs the rest of us:
Be so silent you remember all the way to yesterday.
Tune your ear to the in between spaces.
The archive is an incomplete project.
Violence woven into its design.
She continues by sharing that “The last black interred in the [Hunts Point] slave plot…was an old negress named ‘Aunt Rose.’ She was something of a character in her way, and memory of her has consequently survived” and that “Thomas Leggett lies in the “Friends Burial Place in St. Peter’s,” and his old slave Rose . . . lies at his feet by his request.” We are asked to carry the memory of Aunt Rose with us as we place our roses upon an altar set beneath a tree where Alex LaSalle is drumming. There I share overdue hugs with dear ones Joya Powell and Paloma McGregor and take in the sounds of the passing train, feel the warm earth under my soles, and appreciate being together outside in a place of reflection and community. Darvejon and Alethea join Starr for a pouring of libations at the altar, thanking the day, the tree, the ground, the dark, the sun, the rain, those next to us, and our ancestors.
A third dancer, Imani Gaudin, rises from behind the tree and we follow her towards a fallen tree. Imani dances a meditative solo full of rises and falls, stretching our perception to sky, across the span of the tree, and into the ground. Here a connection into the soil highlights the softness of the earth, stirring our collective dream for a peaceful place of rest, and reminding us of the labor inherent to cycles of rebirth. There is elegance, presence, and a sublime meeting of the complexity of life on the planet in this solo. Standing at the collapse of a large tree from which many smaller trees have sprouted, listening to Starr singing “down, upon a river… in each old tree… memory bids us… And we weep thee,” my senses fill with a lush influx of sight, scent, sound, and spirit. Amidst a pervasive grief, this moment was like a balm in its embrace of how loss breeds blossoms.
We process to the ledge of BAAD!’s back entryway and there encounter a Trickster, played by Anthony Holiday, who snaps at the performers bringing Ghost and dancers into a spell of movement while he sings “Cross my heart, If I’m lying, I’m dying… Cross my heart, If I’m living, I’m lying.” We are brought into the theater and I feel my system shift from the softness of grass and the green of trees, and settle into my seat as I’m reminded “We’re at the crossroads now.” The dancers surround Holiday, swinging and dropping weight, while he pulls in the power of orature, telling us he’s come “all the way from yesterday,” and then freezing when he calls out that he met Devil. Once Holiday goes off in search of the water, dancers and Ghost return with drops to the ground as if a loss greater than gravity besets them while time traveling and geotracing the remnants of the Middle Passage. The heaviness pulls apart fabrics of chronological time and brings the painful past into the painful present. Darvejon and Holiday pass through a vigorous duet full of slippery drownings and returns to shore. Eventually, Alethea brings the paradox of play and prudence together in a solo to Stevie Wonder’s “You and I.” She measures the ground heel to toe, skips like on a sidewalk or a playground, and ripples move through her form in elegant clarity. She measures the ground with her body, counting out: “That’s 405…That’s 406… that’s 407… that’s 408.” We hear her breath. The lights go dark.
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