whale fall reckoning – mayfield brooks

Choreographer mayfield brooks presented two works–whale fall abyss in the cargo hold of the Tall Ship Wavertree, calling up ghosts and ancestors from the intersecting histories of whalers and slave ships and whale fall reckoning in the Upper Gallery of The Arts Center at Governors Island. Using found objects, sound, light, movement and projection, brooks conjured an abyssal underwater world that transformed the formerly munitions storage warehouse into an imagined site of the decomposed whale.

Both presentations were a culmination of brooks’ project Whale Fall, originally commissioned by Abrons Arts Center and virtually premiered as an experimental dance film in 2021 during the height of the Covid-19 epidemic. When Whale Fall (the film) premiered, brooks wrote, “This project was born out of a desire to sit with grief and rage in a world that discarded too much and consumed too much. As a result, the bodies of whales and the bodies of Black folk seemed to have a kinship in how they were both targeted, hunted, and consumed since the transatlantic slave trade. I also came to know that some slave ships were used as whaling vessels.” In that present moment of continued environmental destruction caused by war and accelerated global warming, brooks was asking, “What light reached us? What darkness welcomed the reckoning?”

After four years of rigorous research and numerous iterations, brooks’s ever evolving project Whale Fall continues to decompose itself. This iteration lives as a call to the wild parts of ourselves, a denouement to complacent attitudes towards death and decay. How are we  entangled in the ruse of romance with our compulsion to consume and our dependence on war machines? Why do we continue to kill?  How can the whale fall reorient us to face our own mortality with more compassion? brooks considers the whale fall as a reckoning. They imagine their ancestor’s bones mingling with whale bones beckoning us to embrace interspecies care and relation beyond the human. Perhaps we can save the whales, ourselves, and the planet if we simply decompose.

Performers mayfield brooks, performer; Dorothy Carlos, electric cellist; Galle, performer; James Kogan, sound designer Camilo Restrepo, performer

Please note, the whale fall reckoning installation involve loud sounds and video containing moments of nudity.

mayfield brooks is part of LMCC's Extended Life Dance Development Program supported, in part, by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Accessibility: The Upper Gallery can be accessed by elevator via the lower cafe space or stairs. All ferries to Governors Island are wheelchair accessible. Further accessibility information can be found here.

Installation Activation: 1 hour