Can I get a witness? Viewing mayfield brooks at JACK

Performance artist mayfield brooks
(photo: Amar Puri)

Letters to Marsha with Viewing Hours (a diptych)
by mayfield brooks
JACK
January 30-February 1

In the tiny storage room, where the pungent aroma of earth and rose petals prickles your nostrils, I stand in a single line of people skirting the edge of a funereal bier covered in colorful decaying foliage. I see a bare foot sticking out from this cover, even as I hear mayfield brooks' voice on a looping recording (calling for "a witness") and tamp down a feeling of being trapped. I notice a thin, dry stalk, its end lightly poking the sole of brooks' foot, and I wonder if brooks feels it, is irritated by it. I wonder if I shouldn't pluck it away. But I dutifully stand, like everybody else, listening, looking in this solemn enclosure. Finally, I carefully--so as to not startle brooks or draw anyone else's attention--reach for the stalk and pull it off brooks' flesh.

In small groups, the audience will cycle through that opening viewing room then gradually assemble in a larger but still intimate space nicely set up to encourage comfort and seating choice. This feels more like a funeral parlor than a performance space. Merging two of brooks' works, Letters to Marsha with Viewing Hours (a diptych) is every bit as much a memorial service, a participatory ritual, a raucous channeling and a party with festive cakes (by Susannah Simpson) as it is a performance.

Attend and you will have ample time to gaze or move around the space and commune with the dead (brooks' and yours). Inspired primarily by the late Black gay activist and Stonewall veteran Marsha P. Johnson, this evening introduces us to brooks' ongoing practice of writing heartfelt letters to this role model and would-be mentor and gently suggests we take up a similar practice with our own ancestors of blood or mind.

Will you also see strong, compelling performance in this space? Oh, yes. brooks' collaborating team--a water bearer, a tea maker, a florist, a guide and various viewing hours caretakers--establishes and eases us into the fluidity of the space, but brooks rules the space and gives a master class in commitment, responsiveness, fervent aliveness.

The evening, nearly two hours of sensory richness, is well worth the sometimes frustrating task of navigating subway travel to, from and around Brooklyn. (As of last night, the "C" in C train stands for "cusswords.") Maybe just give yourself at least 15 minutes more than you think you might need to get there, then don't fret because the opening of the piece is experienced in shifts. Relax with some tea in the lobby.

Technical Director/Creative Consultant: Niko Tsocanos

Curated by Stacy Grossfield as part of her IMAGES // LANDSCAPES series and JACK's Reparations365 series.

Letters to Marsha with Viewing Hours (a diptych) continues with 8pm performances tonight and tomorrow. For information and ticketing, click here.

JACK
18 Putnam Avenue, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn
C to Clinton-Washington or Shuttle to Franklin Avenue

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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mayfield brooks: improvising while Black at GIBNEY

mayfield brooks
(photo: Amar Puri)

I spent some time this week drifting back into that intriguing realm that Reggie Wilson's Danspace Project platform opened a few weeks ago (Dancing Platform Praying Grounds: Blackness, Churches, and Downtown Dance). Back with native people of stolen lands and enslaved people of the Middle Passage, back beneath the physical and psychic layers that make up present day Manhattan--this time, though, instigated and guided by mayfield brooks who calls her/their dance practice Improvising While Black.

With the three-part IWB: Dancing in the Hold, brooks opened a new series at GIBNEY called Gathering Place: Black Queer Land(ing), curated by Marýa Wethers as a place of "intersection among blackness, queerness and indigeneity." This series will continue with performances by jumatatu m. poe (Apr 19–21) and I Moving Lab (Apr 26–28).

The design of brooks's IWB: Dancing in the Hold breaks the framework for presentation. It is not one thing; it is different things. People gather not to just watch people do stuff but possibly do stuff themselves. Anything originally planned for one point in time might easily show up in another. And we all bring ourselves to it because it can't exist without us. In essence, this truly is Black space.

IWB: Dancing in the Hold is a performance in three parts investigating mayfield brooks’ ongoing project, Improvising While Black (IWB), which uses dance improvisation as a tool to create atmospheres of care and inquiry while listening to ancestral whispers of the middle passage.

Part I, P(a)rLAY, is an invitation to Black-identified artists to participate in an improvisational dance workshop and performance exploring IWB’s improvisatory techniques including speaking in tongues, wandering practices, somatic awakenings and partner work.

Part II, Dancing in the Hold, is an evening-length performance exploring underwater textures like shipwrecks and contaminated seaweed while embracing Black queer ancestors, Black rage, brilliance and joy.

Part III, Process(Ion), is a durational performance installation exploring gestures of Black revolt, poetics of oceanic abyss, spontaneous readings of Afropessimist scholarly texts and a procession to the African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan.

P(a)rLAY was my second time taking a workshop with brooks--the first, hosted by Movement Research at Abrons Arts Center. Once again, I was amazed by how one gifted teacher's gentle invitations can quickly lead to profound revelations.

brooks has been spending time visiting, contemplating and drawing inspiration from the nearby African Burial Ground memorial. We visited as well, on a windy late afternoon, the twelve of us, and took away impressions for the work we would do together back in the Black Box studio. We also wrote letters to ancestors known and unknown, and learned meaningful things in the writing that perhaps we would never have attained any other way.

I will not be able to attend the durational event, Part III, tomorrow. However, I did return to GIBNEY's Black Box last night for Part II, Dancing in the Hold. I witnessed the entirety of it through a shroud of silver. Because I was a spirit. Because brooks asked nicely. Because two of us from the P(a)rLAY workshop showed up/said yes. So, into the depths where inky dark and screams and whimpers are broken by bioluminescence. Where a switched-on, unrestrained brooks is joined in liberation by South Africa's outstanding Mlondi Zondi.

It's late in the day now, but tickets might remain for tonight's show. Try for them!

For information and tickets for mayfield brooks's events tonight and tomorrow, click here. For information, tickets and series passes for Gathering Place: Black Queer Land(ing), click here.

GIBNEY
280 Broadway (enter at 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan
Subways: 4/5/6 to Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall; N/R/W to City Hall; 2/3 to Park Place

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