Black Social Dance: Chicagoland Moves

This symposium is a knowledge-generating gathering of scholars and artists dedicated to exploring the intersections of Black identity and social dance in the context of Chicago. Organized under the auspices of Slippage: Performance | Culture | Technology, a research lab founded by Scholar-Artist-Professor Thomas DeFrantz and supported by a Mellon grant, this gathering wants to draw a theoretical landscape for understanding how black social dance operates as a lever for people in Chicago. Starting with social dance as the basis for performance, what if we think about social dance as a way of setting an agenda or a template that figures the inherent black time in thought and practice? We are thinking about social dance in Chicago as a life-organizing , community-building practice, which opens a way of theorizing black social dance as relational, discursive, and embodied. It allows us to frame social dance as a method of inquiry into Black life—how people gather, resist, and exist in moments that do not seek to be captured or valorized but instead stand as repertoires body knowledge.

Participating Researchers:

Thomas F. DeFrantz: Founder Slippage Lab

Jamal “Litebulb” Oliver: Chicago Footwork)

Danielle Roper: University of Chicago

E. Moncell Durden: University of Southern California

Meida McNeal: Honey Pot Performance

Wills Glasspiegel: Artist, Filmmaker, Scholar.

Ayo Walker: Assistant Professor at Columbia College Chicago

Aaliyah Christina: Chicago Dance, Writer, Curator

Michael Davis: Dancer, Rapper, Choreographer.

Jenn Freeman: Chicago-based burlesque artist

Webster McDonald: SLIPPAGE/Northwestern University

Host or Publisher SLIPPAGE: Performance | Culture | Technology