Whale Fall

Sedona International Film Festival presents the Northern Arizona premiere of “Whale Fall” on Tuesday, June 9 at 7:00 p.m. at the Mary D. Fisher Theatre.

Choreographer and artistic director, Mayfield Brooks, will be in Sedona to host the film and Q&A discussion following the screening.

“Whale Fall” 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.

Mayfield Brooks, choreographer/artistic director
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 “Whale Fall”, and a 2022 Danspace Project Platform artist. They were a 2022-23 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, the 2024 Alma Hawkins Visiting Chair at UCLA with the World Arts and Cultures/Dance program, 2025 Creative Time Research and Development Fellow.

“Whale Fall” will be shown at the Mary D. Fisher Theatre on Tuesday, June 9 at 7:00 p.m. Tickets are $15 general admission or $13 for Film Festival members. Tickets are available in advance at the Sedona International Film Festival office or by calling 928-282-1177 or online at the BUY TICKETS link to the right. Both the theatre and film festival office are located at 2030 W. Hwy. 89A, in West Sedona.