De-Composing Dance – Thursday, February 18, 2021, noon to 1:30 p.m.

DE-Composing Dance: A Discourse for dance decomposition and choreographies of breath is an improvised danced lecture, poem, and song that came out of mayfield’s experience of becoming an anaerobic organism during the Covid-19 quarantine in their tiny apartment in Brooklyn, New York. It also came out of mayfield’s ongoing practices of making compost as an urban farmer, burying themself under over forty pounds of compost for a work entitled Viewing Hours, and writing daily letters to queer ancestor and black transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson. The work is a call to action to heat up, aerate, moisten, activate and decompose the world we live in, calling human and nonhuman ancestors to the table. The weight of history, the weight of decomposed-black-life-matter, and Marsha P. Johnson’s enchantment with flowers inspires this work. This event is made possible by Dance Studies and funding from Steve and Laura Wagner and the Epstein Family Foundation. Photo Credit: Carolyn A’Hearn CSUSM Students: free. Community: Optional Donation. Faculty/Staff/Alumni: Optional Donation. All donations will go back into the Arts & Lectures fund to provide for future events.