For a story honoring the history within the water, I am struck by the wind.
It’s 12:30 pm on a breezy Saturday afternoon in the Bronx. The days leading up to between wave and water are a swell of persistent heavy rainfall that stings of glaciers. Today, though, it feels as if the Bronx is breathing from its diaphragm in anticipation of this performance.
between wave and water is a site specific performance reprised by Aletha Pace on May 10th to honor the burial ground of Africans enslaved by the Hunt, Leggett, and Willet families in the land now known as Joseph Rodman Drake Park. Through collective chant and ritual, the performance summons and honors their legacy – a legacy left unrecognized by the state. A Contemporary Bronx Trickster character and their search for water connects the performance’s vignettes and leads us through space from the park to Hunts Point Landing.
During pre show, the artists Maria Bauman, S T A R R busby, Imani Gaudin, Darvejon Jones, Alex LaSalle, Maleek Rae, Katrina Reid, Indigo Sparks, and, of course, Alethea Pace are sprawled throughout the irregular patch of green that sits off Hunts Point Avenue and Oak Point Avenue. This patch offers a botanical reprieve from the industrial landscape of Hunts Point. The artists move in a way that to me, a mover but humbly not a dancer, reads as contemporary dance – emphasizing slowness and intention. They carefully contort their bodies, creating images that reflect the world around them. The dancers move like trees in the wind. Their masks catch glimpses of the sun. The leaves. The grass. One artist wears all white— a durag, shorts, and a trendy-cut top — and appears to be doing the opposite of everyone else. He hides while the others peacock. He stands still while the others move. I immediately recognize him as The Contemporary Bronx Trickster character– played by Maleek Rae. Conga drums burst out for attention from within the patch of green. The drums syncopate with the beeping of trucks backing up; each note makes way for the next, creating dissonance and harmony.
A guide named Tsunami introduces a small group of us to “watery guides as we travel through time and space”. Tsunami cautions us about the journey ahead; though this is a participatory performance, we’re advised to honor our body: to scream (if we must), to dance if the music moves us, and to please, please drink water.
I am part of the first group to head into the park. Alethea Pace greets my group with a fistful of babies’ breath, football mums, daisies, and tulips. Her first remarks are casual, about how wonderful the weather is, noting the weather’s participation in this happening. Pace guides us down a pathway and stops in front of a fence with a sign with the park’s name on it. Just beyond the fence are slabs of stone lined up in neat rows. A graveyard. We learn the park is a burial ground for the Hunts family, a family of enslavers. Just outside the fence, beneath the stump of what used to be a willow tree, are 44 bodies buried in unmarked graves. We are each given a flower, then one member of my group is asked to meet an artist sitting about 30 feet ahead. We, the remaining four, are asked to carry the memory of Bill Swann– one of the many Africans buried in the park and left unacknowledged– and to lay our flowers down at a memorial lying between the drummer and the cut-down willow tree. We walk towards the rhythm of the drums until we reach a blanket holding a bell, crystals, and a sepia-toned image of a graveyard. We place our flowers atop the memorial of ephemera.
Stillness falls upon the Bronx as we gather in front of the willow stump. We wait with bated breath for the next leg of the performance. The wind becomes one with the group, ceasing to blow out of respect for the coming ritual. The drummer weaves and punches and slaps between the screeches of brakes and the whooshing of hydraulic systems. In this liminal space of the performance, the audience members take a moment to connect through smiles, head nods, and classic city small talk– mapping our comings and goings. Our bodies face the memorial beside the willow stump, our backs face the barred graveyard. We disregard the private property of the city lying behind the cold bars. While the public legacy of those who lay in marked graves at Joseph Rodman Park may be materially rich, we understand that state recognition is acquired through a morally bankrupt system of violence and ownership. The world around us swells and contracts with the rhythm of the drums and our bodies. The performance at this point communicates the wealth of collective remembrance.
After some time, the character GHOST – played by S T A R R bubsy – leads the pouring of libation – a segment of the performance which I found to be expertly crafted. During this sequence, the artist allows ritual to lead the experience.The performers stagger on a hilly patch of green cradling jars of clear liquid. In the first few lines of their coro-pregón, GHOST seam rips time and space. Between each call and response thanking the ancestors for air, light, today, tomorrow, and yesterday, the artists pour out their jars of liquid. The artists speak in both concrete and metaphorical terms, treating the audience as sophisticated and knowledgeable. GHOST sings out “remember” repeatedly then moves into the phrase, “Memory bitters we weep them. Down upon a river in each oak tree.” Simultaneously, cast member Imani Gaudin dances wearing a hooded cage made of bark which evokes the cut-down willow tree. Through movement and chant, the artists act as conduits to the other side and offer a contemporary take on mourning, honoring, and dancing with and among our ancestors. The energy conjured at this moment allows the audience to connect the performance to their own experience of slavery’s horrific legacy. In this section, between wave and water is a thoughtful amalgamation of pan-African rituals.
The wind matches the audience’s responses to the GHOST’s calls, following a heavy burst with a soft one, a long breath with a shorter one. I’m reminded of a moment in Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust, a film set in 1902 Saint Helena Island that follows three generations of Gullah women in their fight against colonial hegemony. In this scene, Eli breaks glass bottles that cover the branches of a tree, causing the island to be inundated with a windstorm– a manifestation of the disturbance caused by whatever— or whomever— was trapped in those bottles. In this moment, between wave and water possesses an understanding of its own scope that allows for organic moments of participation. The wind itself seems to participate which empowers the audience to connect beyond their immediate surroundings.
But then, the Trickster runs into the scene, abruptly shifting the energy of the performance from a melancholic-live-art-ritual akin to something more like Jerzy Grotowski’s immersive Poor Theatre. The Trickster interrupts the collective scene of mourning and begins to puppeteer the others. Through pantomime he immediately communicates he has power that he is not afraid to wield, but, for some unknown reason, he restrains. Instead, he sings and monologues, oscillating between a benevolent urbanite and a young spirit who is lost and confused, who is “lying and dying”. He leads us down the road, around the corner from the park, and into a yellow school bus.
Once seated, we find out a little bit more about the Trickster and their search to find the water. Though Rae’s monologue is beautiful, in both content and form, I wasn’t able to soak in their words due to another abrupt shift in energy. Immediately after the Trickster leaves the bus to continue their quest for water, we are asked by Tsunami to collectively ponder the question “What would it take for us to be free?” Riding to Hunts Point landing, the conditions of participation felt predetermined, which left me uninspired.
I am frustrated by the question of freedom, but not because of its complexity. Up until this point the performance had done a stand-up job of highlighting a way we Black Americans can mourn histories that are not properly or formally acknowledged. This performance proposes ways for us, the inheritors of slavery’s legacy, to tap into a sixth sense and feel the unsettled spirits buried in almost every square foot of the United States. The majority of the performance didn’t seem, to me, to be grappling with freedom – unless we are talking about the Trickster’s plot-driven desire for freedom from agony and confusion. The first half of this performance reckoned with archival silences and the ways in which we can honor those whose labor and torture the country is built upon. It feels disjointed to begin down the path of ritual and then abandon it for audience conversation about ways to free ourselves.
Like a dutiful participant, I join a small group and together we attempt to chip away at the question of freedom. Audience member, videographer, and the partner of Alethea Pace brings up the Buddhist concept of Interbeing. This is, from his understanding of Pace’s explanation, a way to assert that everything is connected: we are all a part of each other. Perhaps the wind was an omnipresent actor in this performance. Being raised, in part, in Georgia I think of Lake Lanier known for dragging swimmers to the bottom. Those who have survived say it feels as though someone is pulling them to the lake’s depths. I imagine that there are spirits– or tricksters, southern haints– attempting to be laid to rest, or to bring news from beyond, back to the surface. Or I think of Albany and Georgia and their relationship to storms and water’s destructive powers. A storm surge is when wind created by a storm pushes the water towards land. Storm surges are the cause of most deaths during storms. Is it the ancestors pulling us off land towards a state that is more free, I wonder? I chew on these connections, but ultimately land on the thought that if interbeing is the goal of the performance, then the Trickster and their quest for water– for freedom– doesn’t fit into that goal. The Trickster’s story takes away from the connectivity achieved in the first half through ritual and chant. Perhaps the framework of interbeing is only applicable to the first half of the performance.
I return to the recent memory of the beginning of this performance when the audience was split into groups and asked explicitly to honor those who lay beside the cut down willow tree. My fellow group member was asked to see herself in the mirror, asked if she could feel her heartbeat, and then given a flower to remember Agnes.
I wonder what the performance would be like if the audience continued to be pulled apart and brought back together. What would it be like if we each had a piece of the whole experience and had to commune with each other in order to build the narrative collaboratively? In the beginning it felt as if we were mapping together a scene of subjection; naming a form of domination that is unheard, unseen, and unnoticed. Building upon Saidiya Hartman’s framework.
From archival absence, we began to piece together a history that had been marginalized, intentionally. Then I felt what it is like to connect to a plane of existence beyond our own, following the lead of a spirit– a GHOST. By chanting in unison and bittersweetly yipping, in the beginning of the performance, we experienced the power of our collective tongue. That collectivity and ritual energy was halted and shifted by the Trickster’s journey; a story of a singular lost soul and his mischief. The Trickster brought a high frenzied and dazed energy which weakened between wave and water’s otherwise strong case for rethinking place and ancestral memory. It was strongest within its moments of silence, slowness, and repetition. As more spoken text unfolded, and the character, the performance’s political potential narrowed.
Whereas in the beginning, when we had this incredible opportunity to discover, debate, commune, and protest under the conditions Pace sets forth. All in all, this was a solid show with grounded reverential takes on collective remembrance and mourning, as well as skilled, clever movement and audience participation formatting.
For a story about a quest towards the water, I am struck by the wind. It seems to dance alongside the artists and beckon for connection; half the time, its energy is met by the performance.
After the bows, after thanking the cast and crew, Alethea Pace gives thanks to the ancestors. As she does this the wind picks up dust and carries it across the patch of land towards the water. The two elements meet as one.
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