mayfield brooks

mayfield, a brown-skinned person with long brown braids, is in the foreground of the photo in a church with an altar and electronic cellist in the background. mayfield is in a backbend position with their head and bare feet touching the blonde wooden floor--arms stretched up towards the sky & wearing pink and purple sweats and a red tank top. mayfield's fingers are curled & expressive. The cellist is blurred, wearing a black sweater, brown pants, and black boots. The carpet on the stairs of the altar behind the cellist is a tan color. The cellist, named Dorothy, is sitting on a chair in front of the church altar stairs & is a light brown skinned person with long hair and bangs wearing a white mask & playing their electric cello with cables attached to it. — © Ian Douglas

mayfield brooks improvises while black and is based in Lenapehoking, the unceded land of the Lenape people, also known as Brooklyn, New York. brooks is a movement-based performance artist, vocalist, urban farmer, writer, and wanderer. brooks teaches and performs practices that arise from Improvising While Black (IWB), their interdisciplinary dance methodology which explores the decomposed matter of Black life and engages in dance improvisation, disorientation, dissent, and ancestral healing. brooks is the 2021 recipient of the biennial Merce Cunningham Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, a 2021 Bessie/New York Dance and Performance Award nominee for their dance film, Whale Fall, a 2022 Danspace Project Platform artist, and a 2022-23 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University.