Mai'yah Kau, aka Maima, The Water Spirit, is a queer Liberian diasporic artist raised and based in New York City. A storyteller and embodier of new traditions, Mai'yah draws on old and ancestral West African practices, digging into their social dimensions to explore how inherited forms live and evolve in the present. A full-spectrum doula and burlesque performer, Mai'yah moves across genres, honoring the body as a vessel of memory, possibility, and rebirth. They are currently a 2026 fellow with Culture Push, Dancing While Black, and the Performance Project. Mai'yah is also an inaugural fellow of the Pearl Primus Dance Research Fellowship with Pepatián and M'bewe Escobar.