Dance Department to host Collegium for African Diaspora Dance

The Department of Dance will host the Collegium for African Diaspora Dance (CADD) on Thursday and Friday, April 9-10. CADD is an egalitarian community of scholars and artists committed to exploring, promoting and engaging African diaspora dance as a resource and method of aesthetic identity. CADD was founded at Duke University; UNC Charlotte Assistant Professor of Dance Takiyah Nur Amin is one of the group’s original members.

The UNC Charlotte meeting of CADD includes two free public events.

At 6:30 p.m., April 9, Thomas DeFrantz will present “SWITCH: The Dancing Body of the State: Queer Social Dance, Political Leadership and Black Popular Culture” in Robinson Hall, Room 103.

When black social dances are practiced by American political leaders, as when First Lady Michelle Obama demonstrated “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. DeFrantz’s lecture will examine the intertwining of African American social dances and political leadership, conceived in the bodies of elected officials. In addition, he will consider the commercial and socially inscribed leaders of popular culture, including Beyonce and Madonna, as arbiters of African American social dance.

DeFrantz is chair of African and African American Studies and professor of dance and theater studies at Duke University. He is past-president of the Society of Dance History Scholars, an international organization that advances the field of dance studies through research, publication, performance and outreach to audiences across the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

A roundtable with the founding members of CADD will be at 6:30 p.m., April 10, in Robinson Hall, Studio 118; a reception will follow in the Robinson Hall Lobby.

CADD founding members will share their current research concerning theories of black performance followed by a question-and-answer period. Participants include Takiyah Nur Amin (UNC Charlotte), Raquel Monroe (Columbia College Chicago) Makeda Thomas (Dance and Performance Institute, Trinidad), C. Kemal Nance (University of Illinois), Jasmine Johnson (Brandeis University), Carl Paris (Drexel University), John Perpener (independent researcher) and DeFrantz, Andrea Woods and Ava LaVonne Vinesett (Duke University.)