Name: Whale Fall Dance Film
Start: 2026-06-09T19:00:00-07:00
Location: Mary D. Fisher Theatre

Whale Fall (2021) is an award-winning experimental dance film by choreographer Mayfield Brooks, which won a 2021 Bessie Award (New York Dance and Performance Award). The film explores the decomposition of a whale on the ocean floor, blending themes of black life, ecology, and the afterlife of the carcass.
‘Whale Fall” considers how a whale’s life of darkness, codas, echolocations, and vertical slumbering can choreograph a time of grief. No theater lights. No sets. No performance. No narrative. This is an encounter. What can a barren theater teach me? How does a Black artist dance in the abyss? How can the sperm whale’s life of darkness, codas and echolocations choreograph this time of grief? How can I decompose this show? Whale Fall is an opera somewhere in the void, an echo into darkness, an orgiastic silence. A “whale fall” describes the process of a whale’s decomposition after it dies and falls to the ocean floor, where it provides vital nutrients for deep sea creatures. Whale Fall premiered virtually at Abrons' Art Center April 15-17, 2021.