Podcast appearances and mentions of Thomas F Defrantz

We are following Techmoja Dance and Theater Company as they create a new work on sexual trauma in rural Black communities in the South.  In this episode founder Kevin Lee-Y Green talks developing work informed by the place he lives - coastal North Carolina. Kevin has a conversation with Thomas F. DeFrantz who is a scholar, dancer,  choreographer, and the author of Dancing Revelations: Alvin Ailey's Embodiment of African American Culture.  DeFrantz speaks to strategies for touring, as well as the process of creating new work.  (note this interview was done while DeFrantz was based in North Carolina / please check link to his site for updated bio information) Quiet As It's Kept follows choreographer Kevin Lee-Y Green as he creates a new dance work addressing sexual trauma through  the lens of Blackness and southern culture.  While there are a few tough stories in this podcast series this is a story about the power of dance and culture to build resilience in ourselves and communities. 

Thomas F. DeFrantz and Melanie Greene reflect on how technology can support the creative practice of dance artists during this panasonic while keeping the spiritual integrity of QTBIPOC+ artists intact, if not, support its growth. The Dance Union TheDanceUnion.com IG: @thedanceunion FB: www.facebook.com/TheDanceUnion/ *SUPPORT THE DANCE UNION PODCAST* Patreon: www.patreon.com/danceunion Venmo: @Dance-Union NYC Dancers Relief Fund Apply: https://bit.ly/applydancerelief Donate: https://bit.ly/nycdancerelief Melanie Greene www.methodsofperception.com/ IG: @laniereene Patreon: www.patreon.com/melaniegreene Thomas F. DeFrantz https://www.uarts.edu/node/11766

DeFrantz on how African-American artists have shifted and revised ballet.

Abstract: This eleventh episode stands in the light of the forthcoming book of Elizabeth Amisu, editor of The Journal of Michael Jackson Academic Studies. Karin has Elizabeth as her guest to interview her on The Dangerous Philosophies of Michael Jackson: His Music, His Persona, and His Artistic Afterlife. They talk about how an idea became a book, the model it is based on, and Elizabeth gives a brief overview of some of the chapters in the book. REFERENCE AS: Merx, Karin, and Elizabeth Amisu. "Episode 11 – Author & Text: 'The Dangerous Philosophies of Michael Jackson' Pt. 1." Podcast, Michael Jackson's Dream Lives On: An Academic Conversation 2, no. 4 (2016). Published electronically 07/07/16. http://sya.rqu.mybluehost.me/website_94cbf058/episode-11-the-dangerous-philosophies-of-michael-jackson-part-1/. The Journal of Michael Jackson Academic Studies asks that you acknowledge The Journal of Michael Jackson Academic Studies as the source of our Content; if you use material from The Journal of Michael Jackson Academic Studies online, we request that you link directly to the stable URL provided. If you use our content offline, we ask that you credit the source as follows: “Courtesy of The Journal of Michael Jackson Academic Studies.” Episode 11 – Author & Text: 'The Dangerous Philosophies of Michael Jackson' Pt. 1 By Karin Merx & Elizabeth Amisu 'I connect Michael specifically with Shakespeare in the respect that I treat him as a great artist worthy of great respect' - Elizabeth Amisu, author of The Dangerous Philosophies of Michael Jackson: His Music, His Persona, and His Artistic Afterlife https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lqxh6DtPnL4 Official trailer of The Dangerous Philosophies of Michael Jackson: His Music, His Persona, and His Artistic Afterlife, © 2016 Karin Merx & Elizabeth Amisu Episode Questions: 1.What exactly made you write a book on Michael Jackson, what was your inspiration? 2. You based the research on an early modern model and you connect it with Shakespeare? 3. Can you tell us something about commonplace books? 4. Can you explain a bit more about copyright in the seventeenth century? Karin Merx BMus, MA, is editor of The Journal of Michael Jackson Academic Studies, and author of  ‘A festive parade of highlights. La Grande Parade as evaluation of the museum policy of Edy De Wilde at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam'. Find out more about Karin here. Elizabeth Amisu, PGCE, MA, is editor of The Journal of Michael Jackson Academic Studies and author of The Dangerous Philosophies of Michael Jackson: His Music, His Persona, and His Artistic Afterlife. Find out more about Elizabeth here. All Our References and Where to Easily Find Them 1. Joseph Vogel, Man in the Music: The Creative Life and Work of Michael Jackson (Sterling 2011). 2. Elizabeth Amisu, 'Throwing Stones To Hide Your Hands: The Mortal Persona Of Michael Jackson', The Journal of Michael Jackson Academic Studies. Vol. 1: Issue 1 (2014). 3. Elizabeth Amisu, 'On Michael Jackson's "Dancing The Dream"', The Journal of Michael Jackson Academic studies, issue 2, volume 1 (2014). 4. Susan Fast, Dangerous (Bloomsbury 2014). 5. The Michael Jackson Podcast by The MJCast. 6. Information about 'commonplace books'. 7. Edward W. Said, On Late Style: Music and Literature Against the Grain (Bloomsbury 2006). 8. Gordon McMullan, Shakespeare and the Idea of Late Writing: Authorship in the Proximity of Death (Cambridge 2007). 9. Information about Shakespeare. 10. Information about Ben Jonson. 11. Information about the Tudors. 12. Information about the Elizabethan era. 13. Michael Bush, The King of Style: Dressing Michael Jackson (Insight Editions, Div of Palace Publishing Group, LP 2012). 14. Jason King. 'Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough: Presence, Spectacle, and Good Feeling Michael Jackson's This Is It', Thomas F. DeFrantz and Anita Gonzalez (ed.), Black Performance Theory: An Anthology of Crit...

(Co-sponsored with both MIT Global Studies and Languages and Women’s and Gender Studies.) 21st century popular culture, circulated by media, enables unusual affiliations of bodies in motion. When black social dances are practiced by American political leaders, as when First Lady Michelle Obama demonstrates “the Dougie” in her “Let’s Move” anti-obesity campaign, or when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton dances alongside others during her 2012 tour of Africa, black social dance moves toward a center of considerations of embodied knowledge. This talk wonders at the intertwining of African American social dances and political leadership, conceived as the bodies of elected officials. In addition we will consider the commercial and socially-inscribed leaders of popular cultural, including Beyonce and Brittany Spears, as arbiters of African American social dance. Ultimately, the talk suggests a haunting presence of queers-of-color aesthetic imperatives within political mobilizations of black social dance, continually – and ironically – conceived as part and parcel of rhetorics of liberation and freedom of movement. As queer dances emerge in marginalized relationship to mainstream concerns of identity and gesture, and then migrate toward shifting centers of popular culture, they shimmer and switch, bringing to light – perhaps – possibilities of creative aesthetic social dissent. Thomas F. DeFrantz is Chair of African and African American Studies at Duke University, and director of SLIPPAGE: Performance, Culture, Technology, a research group that explores emerging technology in live performance applications. His books include the edited volume Dancing Revelations Alvin Ailey’s Embodiment of African American Culture (de la Torre Bueno Prize, Oxford University Press, 2004), and Black Performance Theory, co-edited with Anita Gonzalez (Duke University Press, 2014). In 2013, working with Takiyah Nur Amin and an outstanding group of artists and researchers, he founded the Collegium for African Diaspora Dance. A director and writer, he is the outgoing President of the Society of Dance History Scholars. He taught at MIT for many years, in Music and Theater Arts and Comparative Media Studies.

On the Grid: Teaching and Researching in the Digital Age Allison Clark (Founder AMedia1/HASTAC) Kim Pearson (College of New Jersey) Simone Browne (University of Texas at Austin) Howard Rambsy II (Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville) Thomas F. DeFrantz (Moderator, Duke University)