ABSTRACT BLACK/Make Black Live Art Now! 2025

Convened by SLIPPAGE director Thomas F. DeFrantz and Ryan Dohoney, Associate Professor of Musicology and Director of Graduate Music Studies

This event is supported by SLIPPAGE and the Office of the Provost Race and Justice Collaborative Seed Fund.

FRIDAY, APRIL 11

6:00 PM: Welcome

6:30 PM: Presentations (schedule TBD)

8:00 PM: Reception

SATURDAY, APRIL 12

10:00 AM-noon: Presentations

1:00-4:00 PM: Presentations

Professor, Northwestern University

Thomas F. DeFrantz directs SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology; the group explores emerging technology in live performance applications. Books: Routledge Companion to African American Theater and Performance, Choreography and Corporeality: Relay in Motion ( 2016), Black Performance Theory: An Anthology of Critical Readings ( 2014), Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance (2002), and Dancing Revelations: Alvin Ailey’s Embodiment of African American Culture (2004). Convenes the Black Performance Theory working group as well as the Collegium for African Diaspora Dance. Recent teaching: University of the Arts Mobile MFA in Dance; ImPulsTanz; New Waves Institute; faculty at Hampshire College, Stanford, Yale, MIT, NYU, University of Nice. Has chaired Program in Women’s and Gender Studies at MIT; the concentration in Physical Imagination at MIT; the Department of African and African American Studies at Duke; and served as President of the Society of Dance History Scholars. DeFrantz acted as a consultant for the Smithsonian Museum of African American Life and Culture, contributing concept and a voice-over for a permanent installation on Black Social Dance that opened with the museum in 2016.

MEDIA

• Improvising the Interface, Dance Technology and the New Black Dance Studies
• reVERSE-gesture-reVIEW 2018

Associate Professor, Music Studies, Bienen School of Music

Professor Dohoney is a scholar of U.S. and European modernism and experimentalism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His research documents the relationships produced by musical performance and artistic collaboration within interdisciplinary artistic communities. He draws upon insights from ethnomusicology, microhistory, affect theory, religious studies, and phenomenology and combine these interdisciplinary methods with rigorous archival research.

MEDIA:

• Dohoney, Ryan. Saving Abstraction : Morton Feldman, the de Menils, and the Rothko Chapel. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019.

[email protected]

Composer, Improviser, Clarinetist, Pianist, Vocalist, Educator and DJ

Angel Bat Dawid is a Black American Composer, Improviser, Clarinetist, Pianist, Vocalist, Educator and DJ. In 2019 she released her debut album The Oracle with Chicago label International Anthem Recording Co.. Recorded using only her cell phone in various locations, the album received wide-spread critical-acclaim with Pitchfork declaring it, “a vibrant, spiritual, free-jazz document of black life as it stands today.” Known for her prowess as a bandleader and performer, Angel has composed and performed several live pieces including her latest release “Requiem for Jazz” which was originally performed at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival in 2019, and “Peace: A Suite for Skylanding,” commissioned by the Art Institute of Chicago for Yoko Ono’s outdoor Skylanding installation. She tours globally with her ensemble “Tha Brothahood,” with whom she released the album LIVE in October 2020, which received numerous accolades, including making NPR Music’s “Best Albums of 2020” list and Pitchfork’s ‘Best New Music’. Angel also leads the all-woman ensemble Sistazz of the Nitty Gritty. As an educator, Angel teaches her “Great Black Music” course at Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center through Old Town School of Folk. She is clarinetist in Damon Locks’ Black Monument Ensemble, and she hosts a monthly music show on NTS Radio. All of this and more is why Pitchfork recently highlighted Angel‘s work in their recent “Pitchfork 25 Next” cover story and included her on the “Pitchfork 25 Next “list, which identifies a select group of artist’s shaping the future of music. Named Winter JazzFest 2022 ‘Artist-in-Residence,’ where she debuted her “fearless expedition to ‘Afro Town’” (WBGO). In 2021 she was named The Chicago Tribune’s “Chicagoan of the Year” shortly following the Juneteenth release of her “Hush Harbor Mixtape Vol. 1 Doxology” which toured internationally. As Co-Founder and member of the performance research group Autophysiopsychic Millennium Angel performed at Carnegie Hall’s Afrofuturism Festival in 2022. As a composer Angel also scored original music for season 2 of the critically acclaimed HBO series ‘Random Acts of Flyness’ created by Terence Nance with whom she’s expressed an ode of veneration to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in their latest co-release titled “Re-Birthday”.

Artist, Author, Educator

BENJI HART is an interdisciplinary artist, author & educator whose work centers Black radicalism, queer liberation & Pr*son abolition.

Their words have appeared or are forthcoming in anthologies from Oxford University Press, AK Press, Haymarket Books, Pluto Press, and have been published at Time, Teen Vogue, The Advocate, The Funambulist Magazine, and elsewhere.

They have led popular education and arts-based workshops for organizations internationally, including Dissenters, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, Collective Power for Reproductive Justice, and Interrupting Criminalization, and facilitated convenings and retreats for groups like Law For Black Lives, Organized Communities Against Deportations, Cicero Independiente, and Project NIA.

They have been interviewed in Public Books, Sixty Inches From Center, Lambda Literary, and on Notes from America with Kai Wright, and been a guest lecturer at the American Repertory Theater, the Race & Performance Lab at the University of Virginia, the National Museum of African American History & Culture, and the Barnard Center for Research on Women.

Their performances have been featured at OUTsider Fest (Austin, 2025); Steppenwolf Theater (Chicago, 2024); La Goyco (San Juan, 2022); and Den Frie (Copenhagen, 2021).

They have received fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell, the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

They were born and raised in Massachusetts, and live and work in Chicago.

benjihart.com

Dean, Henry and Leigh Bienen School of Music and Kay Davis Professor of Music, Northwestern University.

Composer Jonathan Bailey Holland has written music that has been performed across the country and around the world. He has been commissioned and performed by the orchestras of Atlanta, Baltimore, BBC, Cincinnati, Detroit, Indianapolis, Kalamazoo, Los Angeles, Minnesota, New World, Philadelphia, San Antonio, South Bend, and others, as well as the Abeo Quartet, Da Capo Chamber Players, der/gelbe/klang, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Network for New Music, Present Music, Radius Ensemble, Plymouth Music Series, and more.

He is currently the dean of the Henry and Leigh Bienen School of Music, as well as the Kay Davis Professor of Music, at Northwestern University. He has served on the faculty of Berklee College of Music, Boston Conservatory, Curtis Institute of Music, and Vermont College of Fine Arts, and he has been a guest at numerous schools and festivals, including the Bowdoin International Music Festival, the Lake George Music Festival, and Eighth Blackbird’s Blackbird Creative Lab, to name a few. He also previously served as the Jack G. Buncher Head of the School of Music at Carnegie Mellon University. A recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, Holland has been awarded the Fromm Commission from the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship, a Brother Thomas Award and a Live Arts Boston grant from the Boston Foundation, amongst other honors and awards.

Holland has served as composer-in-residence with the Cincinnati Symphony, Detroit Symphony, and South Bend Symphony Orchestras, Plymouth Music Series of Minnesota, Ritz Chamber Players, and the Radius Ensemble. His work can be heard on recordings by the Cincinnati Symphony, University of Texas Trombone Choir, Radius Ensemble, Transient Canvas, as well as soloist Sarah Bob (piano), and Christopher Chaffee (flute).

He holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied composition with Ned Rorem, and a PhD from Harvard University, where he studied with Bernard Rands, Mario Davidovsky, Andrew Imbrie, and Yehudi Wyner.

www.jonathanbaileyholland.com

Artist & Black Being

cat mahari’s practice is built from a richly layered body history, stemming from an archive of research, physical training, and intent to manifest an intellectual, material, and informal legacy of Black liberation through documentation. By examining personal marks and socio-genealogical maps, she explores inner and outer environments. She is a 2023 MAP Fund micrograntee recipient, and a 2022 Foundation for the Arts Emergency grant for blk ark: the impossible manifestation. Her upcoming works include the film, Sugar in the Raw, is a surrealist-inspired exploration of Black intimacy, trust, and touch via Chicago house and stepping. In 2021 she was named the City of Chicago Esteemed Artist Awardee in Dance and received a 2021 3Arts Award in dance. Her works include the Afro Sci-fi Krump film Imprints & Traces, and the multi-disciplinary performance BAM!, for which she received a CSF Generative Performing Artist Fellowship. BAM! is an immersive ensemble work, focusing on Blackness, Amerikkka, and violence. Her post-disciplinary work, the mixtape series violent/break vol i and vol ii, has received national and international development support at Brink Festival (London), High Concept Labs (Chicago), and Imir Scene Kunst (Norway). mahari is a culture bearer of Hip-hop and House having participated, judged and held community initiatives and events. As well as a former member of the Krump family Gool, cat holds a BFA in dance from the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and an MA in performance, practice, and research from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama at the University of London.

catmahari.com

Sound Artist and Researcher

Jamaican and Louisiana Creole descent, Abstract Black / Jayve Montgomery was born at Ft. Hood, Texas on the last day of 1979 and raised a dependent of the department of defense in Berlin, Germany, before and after the wall; Rayne, Louisiana, before the frogs left; Columbia, SC, a home of the confederate flag; and Ft. Campbell, KY, home of the 101st Airborne Division. Montgomery received a double BA in Japanese Studies and Anthropology from Centre College of KY and has also studied sound at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

He is a Nashville sound artist and multi-instrumentalist of the Chicago school of Free, Creative, and Improvised musics, Sonic Healing Ministries sector. He was Senior Program Specialist for the Chicago Park District’s Inferno Mobile Recording Studio (2006-2013), a collaborative sound making program for youth and people with disabilities. He was also a curator and artist-in-residence at Brown Rice (2008-2012), an art space for listening in Chicago, IL.

Since moving to Nashville, he has become an integral member of the improvised and experimental music scene of the city and region; gaining local recognition for Nashville Scene solo performance of the year 2019; and becoming alum of Pitchfork Music Festival (Standing on the Corner), High Zero Festival of Improvised and Experimental Music, and True/False Film and Music Festival. 2021 has taken Montgomery on two tours of France with The Bridge.

MEDIA

• Abstract Black Jayve Montgomery

Vocal Artist and Researcher

Julian Terrell Otis is a vocalist dedicated to the advancement of Black music in America, spanning genres from creative music and jazz, to contemporary classical. His work explores the limitless possibilities of his instrument’s expressive capacity through song, improvisation, and theater. Known for bringing fresh perspective, nuance, and “high drama” to the contemporary music world, the integration of performance “live art” elements is of particular interest to him. Otis’s experiences have led him to create the male soloist role in George E. Lewis’ chamber opera, Afterword, on both domestic and international stages. In exploring the life and work of Julius Eastman, Otis has performed his solo work, Prelude for the Holy Presence of Joan of Arc. He revived Peter Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King at the inaugural Bang on a Can All Star’s Loud Weekend, and is devising works focusing on improvisation, electronics, and movement. All the Pretty Flowers is his first recording project of improvised music and poetry. Committed to community empowerment, he led an improvised jam for South Side Chicago communities called Self Care = Resistance!

• julianterrellotis.com
• Julian Terrell Otis Presents at 2021 Creative Capital Artist Retreat

Movement Artist and Educator

Originally from Charlotte, NC, SJ Swilley (they|them|theirs) is a Black queer movement artist and educator. Centering their own notions of liberation, empowerment and mental health, they are a Summa Cum Laude graduate of Johnson C. Smith University where they received a BA in Dance and a BA in Communication Arts. Swilley holds an MFA in Dance from Temple University where they initially began adjunct teaching. Swilley is an alum of the American Dance Festival where they served as assistant rehearsal director to Michelle Gibson. Additionally, they are an alum of the Urban Bush Women’s Summer Leadership Institute.

Swilley has been honored to work and study under impeccable artists including Candace Jennings, PJ Pennewell, Shani Collins, and LaTanya Johnson. They have performed with Lela Aisha Jones|FlyGround, Martha Connerton/Kinetic Works, and Kariamu and Company. They have presented work at the Cherry Street Pier Show, The American College Dance Association, Loose Leaves Showcase, and Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (BAAD!) Prior to joining the touring company of Red Clay Dance, Swilley has served as faculty at Columbia College Chicago, Denison University, Temple University and Barber-Scotia College. Swilley is a 2020-2021 performance fellow with Queer Art, a 2020-2021 recipient of the Rose Vernick Artistic Transformation Award, and a 2023 City of Chicago (DCASE) Grant Awardee. Swilley is excited to begin their residency in Chicago with the Chicago Dancemakers Forum.

This project is about playing in process. Utilizing a camera as story telling device, SJ Swilley is bridging together several elements of their performance in the sharing of how their art intersects with their mental health. Movement excavations are drawn from improvisation, and pedestrian modes of movement to be captured. SJ will continue to explore the active or “in-process” modalities that are affiliated with being in a creative process.

Host or Publisher SLIPPAGE: Performance | Culture | Technology