Thomas F. DeFrantz

Thomas F. DeFrantz, Ph.D., NYU, is Visiting Professor of African American Studies and Theater at Yale and Professor of Music, Theater Arts, Comparative Media Studies, and Women's and Gender Studies at MIT. His books include the edited volume, Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance (University of Wisconsin Press, 2002, winner of the CHOICE Award for Outstanding Academic Publication and the Errol Hill Award presented by the American Society for Theater Research) and Dancing Revelations Alvin Ailey's Embodiment of African American Culture (Oxford University Press, 2004, winner of the de la Torre Bueno Prize for Outstanding Publication in Dance).

A director and writer, his recent creative works include Queer Theory! An Academic Travesty commissioned by the Theater Offensive of Boston and the Flynn Center for the Arts. In 2005 he designed the history and theory component of the American Dance Festival/Hollins University MFA Program in dance, where he remains on the core faculty. He acted as dramaturg for the Donald Byrd/Spectrum Sleeping Beauty Notebook, noted by the New York Times as one of the best dance events of 2005. DeFrantz served on the boards for the Society of Dance History Scholars, as Book Editor for the Dance Critics Association, and organized the dance history program at the Alvin Ailey School in New York for many years. He performed the "Morton Gould Tap Concerto" with the Boston Pops conducted by Keith Lockhart and the "Duke Ellington Tap Concerto" with the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra conducted by Mark Harvey.

Professor DeFrantz is the founder of "SLIPPAGE: Performance, Culture, Technology," in residence at MIT. Recent work: solo tap/technology piece "Monk's Mood: A Performance Meditation on the Life and Music of Thelonious Monk." In Development: "The House Music Project," a wearable technology work that explores the history of house music; "CANE," an immersive environment dance theater experience that explores black sharecropping after the Civil War. He presented the 2009 Charles Davis Memorial Lecture at Yale, "Performing a Persistent Past: Dance, Memory and Cultural (Re)Production." Professor DeFrantz is always interested in stories, how we tell them, and what we think they might mean