Dancer DeShon Donte Rollins rehearses for “Aguas,” a Latin Ballet of Virginia performance inspired by the James River held at Ancarrow’s Landing on June 3. (Photo by Kelly Rollins Callahan)
Rivers are ancient and new. They take centuries to run through the land but are renewed by rain and ice, flowing past the observer like the inevitable progress of time. It was with these ideas in mind that Ana Ines King, founder and director emerita of the Latin Ballet of Virginia, responded to John Bryan’s recently published “The James River in Richmond.”
“I saw his book announcement and contacted him with the idea,” King says. “He was very interested and accepted right away.”
King envisioned a series of scenes concerning the river’s human and natural history choreographed by the Latin Ballet’s artistic director, Marisol Betancourt. A free performance of the completed work, “Aguas,” featuring seven professional dancers and 26 students, will take place at 4 p.m. Saturday, June 3, at Ancarrow’s Landing.
“We chose Ancarrow’s Landing to perform at, in an open area overlooking the James,” King says. The site brings together threads of the James River experience.
Richmonder Newton Ancarrow started out as a chemical scientist but later switched careers to become a master boat builder selling to wealthy clients. He purchased several acres near the Richmond sewage plant on the James River’s south bank and built the landing as a boat launch in 1965. Through that process he recognized the horrendous condition of the river’s water.
Ancarrow self-produced a powerful, prescient documentary film called “The Raging James,” shot from helicopters, boats and on shore. It aired on public television station WCVE, and Ancarrow showed it to anyone who would watch.
Views of waste pouring into the James forced Richmond and the state Water Control Board to take measures against river pollution. But, frustrated with the indifference of city officials and the lack of culpability by corporate polluters, Ancarrow co-founded Reclaim the James Inc. in 1969 to generate understanding of the vital importance of restoring the river’s health.
Around the same time, Ancarrow documented and photographed more than 400 species of wildflowers along the banks of the James. That enormous collection, now digitized, is available to view online through the Virginia Commonwealth University libraries and Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden.
The landing is the first stop on the Richmond Slave Trail, offering a splendid panorama of the James River and the city, backed like stage scrims by the tragic story of the slave trade. The trail follows the river because, at the vanished Manchester docks and along its south bank wharves, slaves were brought in by boat, marched in chains to their holding cells in Shockoe Bottom and prepared for sale. Well-written and illustrated markers relate that history.
Thus, “Aguas,” through the poetic metaphors made possible by the physical forms of dancers, will relate how the river that birthed a city reminds us of the past, even as the waters flow into our often-troubled current moment.
