FLOODESIGN

II. On my block there is a group of young girls who have mastered the art of double dutch. I see them often, especially when the weather is warm, this tightknit cadre of movers. Their choreography is precise, dynamic. Two command the rope, a sway in their hips as it turns. Two others jump in — knees rising and falling, facing each other. Pit pat, pit pat, pit pat, clap! Pit pat, pit pat, pit pat, clap! Pit pat, pit pat, pit pat, turn! The jumpers now face outward, their backs not quite touching. The two rope-turners bend slightly at the waist, and an intensity flares in their eyes. Their small wrists flick furiously. One, two. One, two. One, two. One, two. One jumper has lost a barrette from her hair. I watch her dart a glance to the sidewalk to notice where the accessory has landed before she grins widely, as if she pities the barrette because it could not keep her pace. Pit, pat, pit pat, pit pat, twirl! Pit, pat, pit pat, pit pat, twirl! And so goes this familiar ceremony I encounter on my evening walks home from work. How is it possible to know a thing even if we are oceans, and continents, and generations removed from the thing? What I mean is this: I am marveling at how these young girls sculpt movement from blood memory. Choreographer Camille A. Brown is meditating on black rituals of movement. What are the stories that live in our bodies? she asks. What is known and unknown? That is, what corporeal data can be mined through dance? Brown's "ink" reckons with the point at which inherited information meets its contemporary manifestations. She catalogs a repository of African diasporic gestures, even as she re-imagines them so that we won't forget the many narratives they contain. Consider what Lucille Clifton offers in her poem "i am accused of tending to the past": i am accused of tending to the past as if i made it as if i sculpted it with my own hands. i did not. this past was waiting for me when i came, a monstrous unnamed baby and i with my mother's itch took it to breast and named it History. she is more human now, learning languages everyday, remembering faces, names and dates. when she is strong enough to travel on her own, beware, she will. So too does Brown cradle history, so that we might learn to recognize the unseen. I watch a rehearsal video in which she traverses the dance floor with short, heavy, staccato steps — her knees never rising too high, her arms bent at the elbows, her waist bending toward the floor. These gestures give way to rapid jumping before coming to a cool stop. I know these movements. On hot summer days, I watch the double dutch queens form these same gestures. The rope-turners bend at the waist; the jumpers step with force and declaration. History has traveled to them. It has found a new dialect. 56 www.peakperfs.org

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