mayfield brooks & Mary Pearson performing How To Be Afraid? at Improspekcije Festival (2019) at Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb. Photo by Tara Ivanisevic.
In partnership with Independent Dance (London) and The Bluecoat (Liverpool)
How to be Afraid? led by mayfield brooks and Mary Pearson comes to Independent Dance for a week of practice, discussion, collaboration and performance.
PUBLIC RESEARCH SPACE
May 24-26, 2021 | 10AM-1PM EST / 3PM-6PM GMT
Online | £40
In-Person @ Siobhan Davies Studios (UK) | £50
Click here to book
TALK
May 27, 2021 | 1:30 PM EST / 6:30 PM GMT
Online | Free with registration
PERFORMANCE
May 28, 2021 | 1:30 PM EST / 6:30 PM GMT
Online | Free with registration
About the TALK:
This public discussion will focus on artists who are exploring dismantling, decomposition, crumbling systems and how to work towards change. What does it mean to be a genuine ally or accomplice? How can we sit with discomfort? How do we navigate this time when pressure needs to be released? mayfield brooks, Mary Pearson and collaborators Akeim Toussaint Buck, Seke Chimutengwende, Anne-Gaëlle Thiriot and Amy Voris will be in conversation.
About How to be Afraid?
How to be Afraid? explores fear and trauma stemming from brooks and Pearson’s different but connected ancestral links to the transatlantic slave trade. Over the past four years, iterations of this project have manifested in research, workshops and performances in a range of international contexts, most recently through the transatlantic online performance Improvisations with interference: haunted by histories, guided by ghosts live streamed in February 2021.
Currently, How to be Afraid? explores pressurized somatic responses to the turbulent politics and pandemic conditions of this past year and how it has shifted perspectives. Living in a pandemic has also exposed harsh realities of already pressurized conditions: racial, gender- based and political violence, police brutality, and the increasing momentum of authoritarian governments in many parts of the world.
When a pressure valve is opened, releasing pressure exposes how much was already there. How do we navigate this time when pressure needs to be released? How do we recover from fear of intimacy, if we are afraid? What kind of life and society is this ‘new normal’ and was it ever normal in the first place? How can we duck and dodge the coercive aspects of normalcy?
This iteration of How to be Afraid? is co-produced by Mary Pearson, mayfield brooks and Independent Dance in partnership with The Bluecoat (Liverpool) and CPR – Center for Performance Research (New York), supported through public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and with support from Creative Land Trust. Earlier iterations of How to be Afraid? were supported by Chisenhale Dance Space, Metal (Liverpool) and Improspections Festival at the Museum for Contemporary Art, Zagreb and the GPS/Global Practice Sharing program of Movement Research (NYC) with funding from the Trust for Mutual Understanding.
How to be Afraid? is supported, in part, by CPR’s Artist-in-Residence program, which is made possible, in part, by Dance/NYC’s Rehearsal Space Subsidy Program made possible by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
More information and updates about How to Be Afraid? can be found at: https://www.independentdance.co.uk/programmepage/activities/how-to-be-afraid-mary-pearson-and-mayfield-brooks/