This emotional solo portrays spiritual struggle through muscular interplay between a male dancer and a bench. The work was inspired by Howard Fast’s novel Freedom Road, and refers to the tragic influence of the Ku Klux Klan on a mixed-race community in the rural South after the Civil War. The soloist asserts himself within and against the themes of oppression and transcendence in the highly stylized, gestural vocabulary of the piece. The dancer, “sitting on the mourner’s bench,” reflects upon the end of his community and the horror of its slaughter. Set to the traditional spiritual There Is A Balm in Gilead.