Looking Back to See Forward

I step off the elevator onto the 5th floor of the Whitney Museum and I am awed by the spectacle, vastness, and ground shifting power of the “Edges of Ailey” exhibition. This tribute to Alvin Ailey and his universe—past, present, and future—not only lifts up its larger-than-life subject but it also, like a great ocean wave, raises up and carries forward everything in its wake. I daresay “Edges of Ailey” not only illuminates the importance of Alvin Ailey as a Black American artist, it also does this for modern dance. The exhibition shows modern dance to be a meaningful, expressive, and influential art form—giving it much greater public visibility than what is afforded by the performance hall, public television, or other museum shows.

Performance

Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born: “Let Slip, Hold Sway”

Place

Whitney Museum, New York, NY, February 6, 2025

Words

Karen Greenspan

Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born's “Let Slip, Hold Sway.” Photograph by Maria Baranova

Under the inspired and big-thinking curation of senior curator Adrienne Edwards, the Whitney dedicated its 18,000 square-foot fifth-floor galleries to presenting Alvin Ailey’s story. This grand celebration of black resilience, accomplishment, and excellence—through the context of black dancing bodies—goes beyond the immense city block-long space and into the incalculable realm of performance. In the museum’s third floor theater, the exhibition offered over ninety live performances including newly commissioned works by other creators. The visionary programming truly carries forward the Ailey ethos of building a platform for other Black modern dancers and choreographers and included commissions by: Ronald K. Brown, Trajal Harrell, Bill T. Jones, Ralph Lemon and Kevin Beasley, Sarah Michelson, Will Rawls, Matthew Rushing, Yusha-Marie Sorzano, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, and Okwui Okpokwasili in collaboration with Peter Born. The diversity of artistic voices attests as Adrienne Edwards put it, “to Ailey’s profound presence—whether as influence, imprint, or shadow—in contemporary dance.”

During the final week of this almost five-month exhibition, Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born are presenting their work titled "Let Slip, Hold Sway." Okpokwasili is a Brooklyn-based, multidisciplinary artist of Nigerian Igbo descent. She creates work in collaboration with her partner in life and art, Peter Born, under the auspices of their company, Sweat Variant. Just as Ailey saw collaboration as key to developing creative potential, Sweat Variant (from the website) “describes a collaborative practice to make challenging and rigorous work at the intersection of dance, theater, and visual art.” As described in the performance announcement, “‘Let Slip, Hold Sway’” continues ongoing research into the entanglement between ancestors and the role of ritual using the aesthetics of experimentation and unexpected collaborations.” It contributes to the growing constellation of material for their adaku trilogy (“adaku: part 1” premiered in 2023).

Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born's “Let Slip, Hold Sway.” Photograph by Maria Baranova

I walk into the dark theater space to behold a dance already in process, or more precisely—a ritual in process…a process in process. Adjusting to the darkness, I take a seat on one of the benches arranged along with some seat cushions around the central performance space. On a circle of red flooring about ten feet in diameter, Okpokwasili is standing, her feet in motion but maintaining their contact with the ground, her torso undulating, and her arms and hands exploring the air in a somatic sensing of the kinesthetic field she inhabits. The visuals, constructed by Born, include two large metal rings (slightly larger than the circle on the floor), anchored to the dance ground that angle diagonally upward. Suspended above the dancer, is a smaller disc, upon which projections of moving water play across its underside. The electronic score of insistent rhythmic percussion (also by Born) charges the environment with energy as the dancer lifts her face with an expression of joy and wonder.

Okpokwasili raises an arm and points a finger upward. At this gesture, we become aware of a chorus of three other dancers (Bria Bacon, Kris Lee, and Katrina Reid) who rise to their feet from low stools surrounding the central space. Their faces are hidden beneath shamanic headdresses made of long strands of thick red coral beads that resemble plaited hair—ingenius constructions that immediately connect to African hair culture and shamanic practices that bridge the physical and spiritual realms. Everyone is wearing dark, sheer, tulle athletic wear fabricated by James Gibbel adorned with embroidered floral patterns, glittery sequins, and recognizable Adidas stripes on the side seams.

The masked dancers move around the circle like ghostly figures and sink back down into the periphery. One figure remains standing; she picks up one of several small lanterns strewn about the floor and carries it inside her headdress to light her path. Placing it down on the floor, she removes her headdress and steps through the metal hoops—literally crossing into another sphere of experience. Upon entering the inner circle, she matches her energy and movement quality to that of Okpokwasili. They engage in a movement conversation—rhythmic, with touch and implied touch, interweaving body parts, and resting on and supporting one another. The Beaded Ones (as those wearing headdresses are called) begin a rhythmic synchrony of swaying and rocking that builds energy as the beads of the headdresses collide against each other making an insistent rattling sound. The dance crescendos as the two central bodies vibrate frenetically in ever shifting, connecting positions. At this moment, a projection of tiny red dots of light intensifies over the central dancers as well as on the small disc overhead. Some even trickle onto a portion of the audience. Under the red lighting, the two dancing bodies are no longer discernible as separate. They have merged into one—in a radical, futuristic vision of nonduality.

Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born's “Let Slip, Hold Sway.” Photograph by Maria Baranova

As the red sparkles dissolve, the quality of the dancers’ movements changes. The movement becomes combative. With a series of quickening punches and blocking moves, Okwui is pushed out of the center as the second dancer continues vigorously thrashing at the air. Okwui crawls to her beaded headdress, places it on her head, and takes her place on a low stool. Now the second dancer claims the circle with a series of loose hipped dance steps. Her arms and torso quickly assume the quality of the steps. Then, as if possessed by an external force, her entire being takes off into speedy, staccato movements that evolve into a rapid-fire, full body vibration.

Like midwives coaching a birth, the Beaded Ones begin their swaying with audible breathing and panting, the headdress beads clicking. They rise and one circles the inner sanctum as the others settle into the ground—either seated or lying down in repose—like ancient banyan tree roots merging with the earth. The third dancer, who is circling, repeats the actions of entering the ritual space: taking a lantern under her headdress, walking to a place of entrance, putting down the light. She crouches to the ground and shakes off her headdress. Okwui, who is seated on a stool as a Beaded One, begins a soothing chant, which is joined in time by the others.

The third dancer enters and matches the now quieted quality of the second dancer. Their bodies rub against each other and then separate to form complimentary shapes around each other. Exploring an isolated twisting motion, one body leans upon the support of the other. They continue this while changing positions of contact and exchanging roles of reliance and support. Again, the splash of red lights illuminates this field of heightened interconnection. In an instant the dynamic changes and the bodies begin to thrust themselves against each other and away from each other, arms flailing. As the lights disappear, the aggressive energy peters out, and the third dancer supports and cradles the second dancer, who is now utterly spent, until she falls out of the dance ground in a puddle of exhaustion.

The third dancer commences her dance to a wash of pulsing chords. On cue, the Beaded Ones sway. One paces the perimeter of the circle as the central dancer rotates her body with the inside of her wrists locked together above her head. She continues revolving as her joined wrists shift behind her head. Imperceptibly, the physical movements begin to suggest something nefarious. Twisting and resisting against her seemingly bound wrists, standing on a single spot under the projections of moving water directly above, the dancer, to my mind, looks to be recalling the trauma of a slave struggling against her bonds in the hold of a ship.

After another period of swaying and rocking, the fourth dancer removes her headpiece to enter the central space. She immediately surrounds the central dancer with her arms, her head, and her gaze as if to hold her. They begin undulating together like seaweed, intertwining their arms and hands, then rotating toward and away from each other. Coaxed on by the sound and motion of the swaying chorus, the two dancers rise and descend, their bodies leaning against each other. Then, vibrating together, the two remain connected, but without the touch of hands or arms. The full complex of electronic sound diminishes to a simple heartbeat and the constellation of red lights appears. In this portal of co-emergence, time seems to slow down to a time beyond time—measured only by human hearts beating in elemental connection.

The third dancer crawls out of the circle and leaves the fourth dancer twitching on her hands and knees. Stretching upward and then back down, she pokes at the air with one arm in jagged motions like a birdling prodding its way out of its shell. And so, it continues for three hours—audience members have been instructed to leave and enter as they please. The work, which Okpokwasili and Born have dubbed a “durational practice” is, in my opinion, a contemporary ritual—a powerful embodied practice of connection, recollection, grieving, healing, and transformation─transformative for the viewer as well as the doer. Dance, used in this way, has been all but lost in our modern world of capital and concepts. Perhaps with the ancestral wisdom of “looking back to see forward” and Sweat Variant’s fearless experimentation, we can find our way back and retrieve it.

Karen Greenspan

Karen Greenspan is a New York City-based dance journalist and frequent contributor to Natural History Magazine, Dance Tabs, Ballet Review, and Tricycle among other publications. She is also the author of Footfalls from the Land of Happiness: A Journey into the Dances of Bhutan, published in 2019.

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