Alethea Pace will present between wave and water twice on May 10 (photo by Whitney Browne)
Who: Alethea Pace and dancers
What: Boogie Down Dance Series site-specific performances
Where: Joseph Rodman Drake Park and Enslaved People’s Burial Ground, Hunts Point
When: Saturday, May 10, $12.51-$44.52, 12:30 & 4:00
Why: The BAAD! (Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance) Boogie Down Dance Series continues May 10 with two site-specific performances by Bronx-based multidisciplinary artist Alethea Pace. Incorporating movement, music, and storytelling, between wave and water takes audiences on an immersive, interactive, participatory journey into the history of Joseph Rodman Drake Park and Enslaved People’s Burial Ground in Hunts Point, which was designated an individual landmark in December 2023; it contains two colonial-era cemeteries in an area where the Munsee-speaking Siwanoy people lived until being forced out in 1663 by English settlers.
Written and directed by Pace, the piece, which honors more than three dozen ancestors buried in the park, explores legacy and reclamation in the context of the modern world, with Ghost representing the present, Trickster the past, and Prophet the future; the music is by S T A R R busby with lyrics by Pace, who choreographed the work with the other performers, Maria Bauman, Imani Gaudin, Darvejon Jones, Alex LaSalle, Maleek Rae, Katrina Reid, and Indigo Sparks. The show, which runs between seventy-five and ninety minutes, includes walking a few blocks and getting on a short bus ride. Pace will also host her guided “Listening With: Hunts Point Walking Tours,” with specific dates and times to be announced.
“The articulation of memory, evoked through the act of moving, unearths an ever-evolving archive,” Pace explains on her website. “In collaboration, the participants and I investigate how our histories reside in our bodies, how our bodies shape and are shaped by the places they inhabit, and how bodies moving in nontraditional spaces inspire new ways of seeing.”
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]