Between Wave and Water

Alethea Pace's latest work, “between wave and water,” is a journey. Performers physically lead an audience through the Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx while examining the history of a local Enslaved African Burial Ground. With movement, storytelling, and song performed along the way, the piece guides the audience through space and time, prompting community interaction and discussions of freedom.

Katrina Reid in Alethea Pace's “between wave and water.” Photograph by Whitney Browne

Pace, an interdisciplinary movement-based artist whose work is rooted in social justice and often centers around the Bronx, developed “between wave and water” during a Civic Practice Partnership residency at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In addition to this, Pace was a 2024 MAP Fund Awardee and a 2021 Dance Magazine Harkness Promise Awardee. Pace has presented her work across New York City and beyond including at Works & Process at the Guggenheim, New York Live Arts, and 92NY.

In this interview, Pace discusses “between wave and water” and how artistically activating a space can bring history into conversation with the present.

How did you become interested in this particular history of Hunts Point?

I'm a Bronx-based artist: I grew up here, and my work is really centered around the Bronx, its history, its present, and its future.

I had heard previously that there was a burial ground in Hunts Point. Hunts Point is a neighborhood that was already near and dear to me because I had worked with Arthur Avilés for many years, whose space BAAD! [Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance] used to be there. [Avilés's] work is so rooted in place that I feel a special relationship to Hunts Point. I started to research and learn more about the history of the Enslaved African Burial Ground, which is located in Joseph Rodman Drake Park. At the same time, there was an opportunity to apply for the Civic Practice Partnership residency at the Met, and in getting that residency, I had two years to really work deeply in this project, building not only more knowledge and awareness of the history, but reconnecting with the community and the folks who have been uplifting this history.

Imani Gaudin in Alethea Pace's “between wave and water.” Photograph by Whitney Browne

The piece uses choreographed dance as well as a choreographed journey by the audience through the Hunts Point neighborhood. What is this journey like?

The piece is definitely a journey, both in the making of it and in the experience that the audience has. The audience arrives at Joseph Rodman Drake Park where the burial ground is located. In the park, the space is activated: We share fragments—because that's really all that we have—of the archive. With the exception of a small sign that indicates that it's a burial ground, there's really no other clear sign. In the center, there's a cemetery where the people who enslaved people are buried—the Hunt, Leggett, and Willett families—and that's clearly labeled with a fence, but on the hill where the African burial is, there's no indication that anything is there.

We say the names of the people that we know to be buried there. The audience is each given a flower, and we cocreate an altar in their honor at that site.

We then travel through the park in a procession, and there's movement and song. There, we encounter a character called Trickster, who's our tricky guide on this journey.

We travel about a block through the area singing, dancing, storytelling, and the audience is invited to participate. Then, the audience gets on a bus led by Trickster and we arrive at another park.

Is there a final destination?

Trickster is on a journey to find the water. We do find it at the second location, Hunts Point Landing, where we encounter more song and dance and storytelling. At that site, we are also able to see Rikers Island as well as Vernon Bain Correctional Center, also known as “The Boat.” Until recently, “The Boat” was operating as a floating jail. A really important aspect of this work is to bridge together these connections between the past and present and to see how the present moment is in conversation with the past. How do we continue to live with “the afterlife of slavery,” as Saidiya Hartman calls it?

What is the significance of water, both for Trickster as well as in your title?

I practice Buddhism, and there is an idea of “the wave and the water.” We think of a wave as something that has a beginning, middle, and end, while the water just is. In thinking about the course of history, we think that things happen chronologically, but also that we are deeply connected and interconnected with the past and with the future. All of these things exist together at the same moment.

Trickster has an antagonistic relationship with the water because it's in this journey [across the water] that a lot has been taken from us. This character is thinking about the water as an entity that has robbed a piece of themselves [the Trickster is referred to using they them pronouns]. In this journey, Trickster is talking about all the things that they're going to do to the water and how they are going to take back what's been taken from them by the ocean. As they get closer, we also see parts of their story that they've tried to hide that have been too painful.

The title is playing with that idea of time as a way to reconcile these painful histories. Through the healing of ourselves, we are healing ourselves and our ancestors and our future generations.

Imani Gaudin, Darvejon Jones, S T A R R busby, and Alethea Pace in “between wave and water.” Photograph by Whitney Browne

The piece is also unique in its relationship with the audience. You mentioned “cocreating” an altar—in what other ways is the audience invited to cocreate this experience?

The audience is very much involved. They are invited to clap, to sing, to make rhythms, and on the bus ride there's a prompt that audience members are given, and they are invited to be in conversation with one another. The question is, “what does it take for us to be free?”

[Throughout the piece], we are invoking the journey of an enslaved person named Bill Swan who is believed to be buried at the site. As with all of these stories, we piece together what we can from what is known, but the violence of the archive is the ways in which it is incomplete and that our voices are not represented directly, that it is always represented in the third person. Swan was a pilot of a ship during the revolutionary war, and he was ordered to pilot this trip through “Hell's Gate” which was a notorious set of choppy waters. The captain told him to go through this water in difficult conditions and he, according to some accounts, said that it wasn't possible, but the captain told him to do so anyway. The ship hit a rock and capsized.

In the piece, Trickster is conjuring that story while at the same time, just a few miles away across the water is the Vernon Correctional Center. We are thinking about how that story of Bill Swan might be in conversation with someone who was incarcerated at “The Boat.”

What is the significance of working site-specific as opposed to in a traditional theater?

Hunts Point is an area that faces many challenges. It is a very industrial area: The Hunts Point food market where all of our food comes from is nearby; there're trucks; it's loud. With the exception of this little park, there're no trees. It's rough around the edges and it is not an easy place to live. In this way, we see the ways in which this history still lives with us—it is visible as we are navigating through the streets.

Making this work was really challenging. At the end of last year, there was torrential rain and I thought, “oh my God, it would be so much easier to do an indoor performance!” But there is something where being on the land itself where these things happened is really powerful. Listening is a really important part of the way that I'm approaching my work, listening with the body, with the archive, with the community, but also listening with the land. Being in that historical space shifts us.

I feel really connected to this place and have been since childhood. Bronx people tend to be very passionate about our borough and trying to make it better and also trying to demonstrate the ways that it's already great. I think that shapes the way that I do my work and why I do work here.

Cecilia Whalen

Cecilia Whalen is a New York City-based dancer, choreographer, and writer. She is a graduate of the Martha Graham School and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In addition to her work with Fjord, her writing can be found in various publications, including Dance Magazine and Commonweal Magazine.

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