Black Performance Theory

Thomas F. DeFrantz is Professor of African and African American Studies, Dance, and Theater Studies at Duke University. He is a dancer, a choreographer, and the author of Dancing Revelations: Alvin Ailey's Embodiment of African American Culture.Anita Gonzalez is Professor of Theater at the University of Michigan. She is a director, a choreographer, and the author of Afro-Mexico: Dancing between Myth and Reality.

“With this compelling volume, DeFrantz and Gonzalez provide less a settled corpus of methodologies applied to a canon of academically sanctioned performance genres than an articulation and elaboration of black corporealities, vocalities, and ‘sensibilities’ across a heterogeneous field of performative enunciations--’high’ and pop culture, geographically dispersed and diasporic. . . .  This promises to become a key work. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.” - R. Remshardt (Choice) "This is theory that dances. [...] Black Performance Theory convenes 14 scholars and practitioners of Africana performance and bids them dance and groove across national, hemispheric, oceanic, planetary, disciplinary, epochal, formal, and methodological boundaries in pursuit of blackness in motion." - La Marr Jurelle Bruce (TDR: The Drama Review)

• Foreword / D. Soyini Madison Acknowledgments Introduction. From "Negro Experiment" to "Black Performance" / Thomas F. DeFrantz and Anita Gonzalez Part I: Transporting Black 1. Navigations: Diasporic Transports and Landings / Anita Gonzalez 2. Diasporic Spidering: Constructing Contemporary Black Identities / Nadine George-Graves 3. Twenty-First-Century Post-Humans: The Rose of the See-J / Hershini Bhana Young 4. Hip Work: Undoing the Tragic Mulata / Melissa Blanco Borelli Part II: Black-En-Scene 5. Black-Authored Lynching Drama's Challenge to Theater History / Koritha Mitchell 6. Reading "Spirit" and the Dancing Body in the Choreography of Ronald K. Brown and Reggie Wilson / Carl Paris 7. Uncovered: A Pageant of Hip Hop Masters / Rickerby Hinds Part III: Black Imaginary 8. Black Movements: Flying Africans in Spaceships / Soyica Diggs Colbert 9. Post-logical Notes on Self-Election / Wendy S. Walters 10: Cityscaped: Ethnospheres / Anna B. Scott Part IV: Hi-Fidelity Black 11. "Rip It Up": Excess and Ecstasy in Little Richard's Sound / Tavia Nyong'o 12. Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough: Presence, Spectacle, and Good Feeling in Michael Jackson's This Is It / Jason King 13. Afro-sonic Feminist Praxis: Nina Simone and Adrienne Kennedy in High Fidelity / Daphne A. Brooks 14. Hip-Hop Habitus V.2.0 / Thomas F. DeFrantz Bibliography Contributors Index