Thomas DeFrantz

Thomas DeFrantz is author of 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).

DeFrantz served on the boards for the Society of Dance History Scholars and as Book Editor for the Dance Critics Association. He also organized the dance history program at the Alvin Ailey School in New York for many years.

He is the artistic director of SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology, a multi-disciplinary arts collective in residence at MIT.

Recently, he served as dramaturg and librettist for the Donald Byrd/Spectrum Dance Theater production of the Sleeping Beauty Notebook, cited by the New York Times as one of the year’s best dance events; adjudicated at the New England Region of the ACDFA; and designed the theory and history curriculum at the Hollins University/American Dance Festival MFA program.

See more of Prof. DeFrantz’s work at: web.mit.edu/slippage.

Thomas DeFrantz earned degrees from Yale (BA), the City University of New York (MA), and the Department of Performance Studies at NYU (PhD)