bio

brooke smiley

brooke smiley is an artist who guides land and body learning.  Grounded in somatic education, public earth art, and dance performance, her work engages a deepening awareness in the body, our relationships with one another, and the world.  A 𐓷𐓘𐓻𐓘𐓻𐓟 Osage woman, she partners with the history of the land and who lives here — all forms more than human — their wisdom and agency, and honors each voice by slowing down to listen.  With a strong background in contemporary, post modern dance, embodied anatomy, earth architecture, and trauma informed pedagogy, brooke invites collaborative spaces of learning through individual sessions, consultation, community engagement, film, and performance. 

A Native Launchpad Artist from Western Arts Alliance 2020-2023, brooke’s recent projects include EARTH.SPEAKS, a land based public art project aimed at healing through the community creation of earth markers, and multisensory dance performance. Rooting in risk and love, EARTH.SPEAKS enlivens public art experiences as both diplomacy and education, honoring diverse personal histories, and uplifting the complexity of contemporary Native identity across generations. Expanding upon practices that include American Indian and Indigenous people in the present tense, this project is currently inviting partners with rural and urban Native and non-Native communities, Public lands, organizations, and institutions worldwide to activate a deeper history of the land and the messages that live here to shift land stewardship back into Native leadership.  

brooke is a Somatic Movement Educator (SME) from Body Mind Centering® working in the BMC® practitioner training, and therapist in Somatic Experiencing® (SE), practicing from both Western and Indigenous perspectives.  Her passion for working with the earth comes from being born into a family of builders.  She holds a California General Contractor’s License #987256, and specializes in Superadobe, as a graduate and long term apprentice of California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture (CalEarth).  She has experience building earth domes for the Tarahumara women in Guachochi, Mexico, the Havasupai in Arizona, sculptural play gardens outside the Hayward Gallery in London, and the “Hollywood Dome” featured on HGTV.

brooke toured extensively in Europe and Australia creating and performing new work with Fabulous Beast Dance Theater of Ireland (now Teac Damsa), Ventura Dance Company of Zurich, and Michael Clark Company of London, with two residencies at Tate Modern.  Her choreography has premiered at Sadlers Wells Lilian Bayliss Theater, REDCAT, and Highways Performance Space, with residencies and solo shows at centre d’ art de passarelle, ritual and research, and sea and space explorations amongst others. She is awarded a Masters of Arts with Distinction from TrinityLaban in London, with a full Leverhulme Trust scholarship.  Her dissertation, “The Face of the Performer: Mask, Identity, and Transformation” and  improvisational research are published in London and Dance Research Forum Ireland (DRFI).  brooke earned her BFA from CalArts as an arts representative to the board of directors.  

She is awarded as a United States Dance Scholar from the California State Senate, California Legislature, and United States Congress.