Dancing the African Diaspora: Cynthia Oliver & Thomas DeFrantz

As part of Spurlock Museum’s Contemporary Conversations Series and in connection with our exhibit, Blues Dancing and Its African American Roots, we bring you a conversation between the award-winning dancers Cynthia Oliver and Thomas DeFrantz. The program took place over zoom on Dec. 10, 2020. See our website for upcoming events in this series: www.spurlock.illinois.edu

Cynthia Oliver is an award-winning dancemaker from St. Croix, Virgin Islands. Her work joins textures from the Caribbean, Africa, and the US. Oliver has toured the globe as a featured dancer with David Gordon Pick Up Co., Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE, Bebe Miller Company, and Tere O’Connor Dance. She has appeared as an actor in works by Laurie Carlos, Greg Tate, Ione, Ntozake Shange, and Deke Weaver. She earned her doctorate in Performance Studies at NYU, is widely published, and has won numerous awards, including a BESSIE, for her choreography. She is a professor of dance at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Thomas F. DeFrantz is Professor in the Department of African and African American Studies, the Program in Dance, and core graduate faculty in Computational Media, Arts, and Cultures at Duke University. DeFrantz’s expertise is in Black expressive cultures and their impacts on everyday life. Currently, DeFrantz directs SLIPPAGE: Performance, Culture, Technology, a research group that explores emerging technology in live performance. In 2017, DeFrantz received the Outstanding Research in Dance award from the Dance Studies Association and is consultant for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, contributing concept and voice-over for the permanent installation on Black Social Dance. DeFrantz holds a PhD from NYU.

English transcripts for this video are available by clicking the Closed Caption button at the bottom of the video. The museum has attempted to make this text match the words spoken in the event. If you find any errors, please contact us at [email protected] with a note of the times and incorrect texts.

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