Reasoning somewhat speciously, the printed program suggested continuity between the slaves and today's immigrants. Without disrespecting the travails of present days arrivals, there is a huge difference. None of the travelers from Africa came here out of their own free will.

With dusk filtering through the roof's huge skylights and against the vague hum of the airport speakers (their volume must have been lowered), a series of skeleton dream houses softly sway overhead. In one of them Haigood moves slowly, exploring its space, its structure its ambience. It is a home freed from gravity, embracing her as pedals upside down, stretches into diagonals, curls into fetal positions.

Other dancers occupied more terrestrial ground on two platforms as they re-enact of history. Sheryeel Washington's gorgeously rounded African-based dancing weaves through the piece like ancient memory. A bushy-haired Robert Henry Johnson in a tenderly elegant relationship that falls apart partners former Lines Ballet dancers Maurya Kerr. In the work's most chilling moment Noe Serrano, as the slave auctioneer, displays Kerr's breasts, examines her teeth and makes her dance a few steps. Even though this was just a re-enactment, it was difficult to watch. In one corner Johnson dances a ring-shout; Ramon Ramos Alayo a fierce Afro-Cuban solo. As the lights go down, a traveler with a suitcase arrives and brings a basket from which he pours "water" of reconciliation. With everyone crowded into one of those tiny house and the sounds of crickets, "Departure" could have had a sentimentalized ending. It's to Haigood and her fine collaborators' credit that it didn't."