Mai’yah Kau, also known as Maima, The Water Spirit, is a queer Liberian diasporic artist with roots in Park Hill, Staten Island and based in Brooklyn. Their work weaves together identity, heritage, and spirituality. Kau blends traditional West African dance with contemporary queer performance to create participatory rituals and dances. Mai’yah is a full-spectrum community doula and birth worker as well as a burlesque performer, these varied practices contribute to Mai’yah’s ability to work across and beyond performance genres. Their work has been shown at Bronx Academy of Art & Dance, Movement Research @ Judson and the Snug Harbor Dance Festival. Mai’yah is also a recipient of the Mertz Gilmore Dance Research Award with Staten Island Arts, fellow of the Divine Fellowship with Public Assistants and Eureka! Press as well as 2024 artist in residence with Dancing Futures Residency with Pepatian in collaboration with BAAD. Through movement and multidisciplinary art, Kau searches for ancestral narratives, both personal and collective, as a way to honor heritage while imagining new futures. Their practice is an ongoing exploration of transformation, resilience, and the fluidity of cultural memory.

PROJECT - GURSHA: COMMUNAL EATING LOVERS

Mai’yah’s proposed project is Gursha: Communal Eating Lovers which is inspired by an Ethiopian practice of feeding another by hand—a gesture of hospitality, intimacy, and care. Inspired by their time in Ethiopia and former lover, they aim to investigate how gursha can illuminate queer intimacy and communal care. This work will weave together food, ancestral connection, sensual liberation, call-and-response, communal participation and rituals of union. Multiple iterations will vary and may look like a live performance with shared dinner, a zine, video and collective moments of reflection.