mayfield brooks

mayfield brooks improvises while black and is based in Lenapehoking, the unceded land of the Lenape people, also known as New York City. 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 experimental dance film, Whale Fall and a 2022 Danspace Project Platform artist. They were a 2022-3 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, the 2024 Alma Hawkins Visiting Chair at UCLA with the World Arts and Cultures/Dance program, and currently a Creative Time Research and Development Fellow.

A brown skinned performer with long brown braids singing in a white jumpsuit with an open left hand gesture framing the face and the other hand reaching down towards the ground. They are standing next to light skinned person with long hair and bangs, head down in full concentration playing the electric cello; both performers are in the cargo hold of a large ship with brick red beams on either side and an old steel furnace on the left and behind them is a yellow staircase. Photo by Cherylynn Tsushima.
ID: A brown skinned performer with long brown braids singing in a white jumpsuit with an open left hand gesture framing the face and the other hand reaching down towards the ground. They are standing next to light skinned person with long hair and bangs, head down in full concentration playing the electric cello; both performers are in the cargo hold of a large ship with brick red beams on either side and an old steel furnace on the left and behind them is a yellow staircase. Photo by Cherylynn Tsushima.

Upcoming classes and workshops

Category: Workshop

S L O W N E S S: dancing with gravity, buoyancy and viscosity

mayfield brooks

Jul 28 - Aug 1, 2025

Photo by Cherylynn Tsushima. A photo of a person's exposed dark brown back on the deck of a boat laying in child's post, they wear a light green sheet and their long black and blonde braids drape over them.

Past classes and workshops