Tara Aisha Willis reflects poetically on a shared evening of performances from David Roussève and taisha paggett in May, 2024 on the occasion of Platform 2024: A Delicate Ritual, curated by Kyle Abraham. 

Read or listen.

David Roussève, Daddy AF
May 2024

Sweet trinket of sound:

hands, the main event but without excess

despite the delicacy, the gesture everywhere—promiscuous—

the extra fingers making light of the situation, crafting figure 

to be, soon, “the man.”

There is pleasure in the throwing

Childlike music, grown-up play

A tremor enters, age creeping in the tremble.

Behind, projected: “the man” in action years ago.

The arch makes present other dancers, now absent, replaced 

in space by a place to sit, to land—

a living room sketched in armchair, side table, rug, lamp.

Story becomes the vehicle, a tactic. Emergent from character— 

reembodiment, stories, photos flickering and then solid color: no harbinger

of new or innovative, but toying instead with memory: its bits 

pieces gone, returned, moving.

“The man” lives in third person, even as his figure is everything.

The third person is also a place to land,

to shape a body, tell how a body’s been,

life through a frame, rather than shaped skin—
  
    [recall, now, seeing David Roussève/REALITY perform at Harlem Stage in 2007: 
    how I could finally both name and witness choreographic and cultural 
    contradictions being danced, spun, unraveled, revered]

speech becomes cry becomes sigh, silence, stillness (or nearly)

The default is this address – this towardness, frontal, masked.

taisha paggett, the weight of our relations
May 2024

Body as bright beached whale,

grasping : embrace.

Fluorescence lines the dark,

feet follow along inside a moving moon;

a spotlight stroll, roving,

defining focus to be foremost on the floor 

for the duration—

the speed of a month, cycle on repeat, fastforward

Sidelined, beams pierce many moons above, perfectly aligned, cresting the balcony’s under-edges (a secret for the audience brave enough to scootch to the sides?)

The sound of vibration itself, metal against hand against air.
         
             [recall, now, how in a week’s time I’ll visit t and meital’s garden-nested home 
             and find handwritten  traces of text on a wall, a plant light in the fireplace where 
             smoke should escape instead caressing an altar of relics and green leaves]

Sway and prop up and let it be known in chalk, written and erased and again:

                 “I am the fucking peacock” —a mantra.

Maudelle Bass writ large, but also handheld, placed under-with flowers and herbs, 

preening without arrogance: preening to be present.

The silent-loud ways some contributions—some lives—
 
are vivid invisible, whispered, 

nearer than you or any other—and then (or at once) refused. 

As if anyone else’s ideas—genius, 

original, only, untouchable, remembered—

could emerge fully-formed 

from the earth unaided. As if.