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Thomas F. DeFrantz

Thomas F. DeFrantz is a professor at Duke University, where he specializes in African diaspora aesthetics, dance historiography, and intersections of dance and technology. His publications include Routledge Companion to African American Theater and Performance (with Kathy Perkins, Sandra Richards, and Renee Alexander Craft, 2018), Choreography and Corporeality: Relay in Motion (with Philipa Rothfield, 2016), Black Performance Theory: An Anthology of Critical Readings (with Anita Gonzalez, 2014), Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance (2002), and Dancing Revelations: Alvin Ailey's Embodiment of African American Culture (2004). DeFrantz directs SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology, a group that explores emerging technology in live performance applications. He believes in our shared capacity to do better and engage creative spirit for a collective good that is anti-racist, anti-homophobic, proto-feminist, and queer affirming.

Supernal Movements, Asymmetrical Encounters: Meg Stuart & Jompet Kuswidananto's Celestial Sorrow

“What is this elegant telepathy that seems to bind sound, light, gesture, and memory across our differences? What is the wild imagination that places Javanese signals next to experimental European dance traditions and processes?” Dance scholar and performer Thomas F. DeFrantz explores the asymmetrical meeting of artistic forms, cultures, and experiences, in the Walker co-commission Celestial Sorrow, created by Berlin/Brussels-based choreographer Meg Stuart and Jogyakarta-based visual artist Jompet Kuswidananto and performed at the Walker in April 2019.