Whale Fall With Me

This zine compilation chronicles Whale Fall’s conceptually vast and embodied research that emerged from the Black Lives Matter uprisings of 2020 in the midst of a global pandemic. Whale Fall was born out of a desire to sit with grief and rage in a world that discards too much and consumes too much. Through my research, I realized that the bodies of whales and the bodies of Black folk have a kinship in how they have been both targeted and consumed since the transatlantic slave trade. I also came to know that some whaling ships were repurposed as slave ships. I began to feel an interspecies ancestral connection with the whales.  Whales became my teachers. I studied how they breathe, sing, listen, echolocate, communicate, take care of their matriarchal families, and enrich the oceans.

This research is the material for some of the dances and songs that I have created for Whale Fall in its various iterations as an experimental dance project expressed through film, opera and installation, since 2020 to 2025.