Thomas F. DeFrantz earned degrees from Yale (BA), the City University of New York (MA), and the Department of Performance Studies at NYU (PhD). 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). 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. SLIPPAGE stages alternative histories of race, sexuality, gender, performance, and technology. Recent work: Ennobling Nonna (2004), a physical-theater solo by Maria Porter (performances US, Italy, Peru, and Denmark); tap/technology work Monk's Mood: A Performance Meditation on the Life and Music of Thelonious Monk (2005; NPN Tour 2005, Cape Town ZA 2008); The House Music Project (workshop 2006) a technology-driven exploration of queer black dance; Queer Theory! An Academic Travesty (Boston Center for Arts and Flynn Center for the Arts 2006, UCLA 2007, Wellesley College 2008), commissioned by Theater Offensive, Flynn Center, and NPN. Current Project: CANE, a media-rich dance theater exploration of black life in the rural South. A happy dissident, DeFrantz has performed the Morton Gould Tap Concerto with Boston Pops conducted by Keith Lockhart and the Duke Ellington Tap Concerto with the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra led by Mark Harvey. 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. He is Visiting Professor at Yale 2008-2009. Always interested in stories, how we tell them, and what we think they might mean. web.mit.edu/defrantz; web.mit.edu/slippage.