Professor of African & African-American Studies and Dance Duke University Durham, NC
Dance Panelist, 2013
Thomas F. DeFrantz founded and directs SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology, a multidisciplinary research collective that explores connections between performance and emergent technology in the service of theatrical storytelling. Recently, DeFrantz presented "Performing Black," a performance lecture for "This & That: Day of Walking, Talking, and Watching," part of the PLATFORM 2012: Parallels series at Danspace Project, New York. Other creative work includes Queer Theory! An Academic Travesty, commissioned by the Theater Offensive of Boston and the Flynn Center for the Arts. He co-convenes the working group Black Performance Theory as well as the international group Choreography and Corporeality of the International Federation for Theatre Research. He is currently president of the Society of Dance History Scholars. A prolific author, his books include Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance, winner of the CHOICE Award for Outstanding Academic Publication and the American Society for Theater Research Errol Hill Award; and Dancing Revelations: Alvin Ailey's Embodiment of African American Culture. DeFrantz teaches in dance and African and African-American Studies at Duke University. He served as a Center dance panelist in 2013.
