This past Tuesday, I attended a Black Experiences Lecture titled “Dancing the African Diaspora: Shared Memories and Memoralizations in Motion ” by Thomas F. Defrantz. Defrantz is a professor at Northwestern University. He is also a well-established author and dancer. The audience was a mixed crowd, including professors, students, faculty, and people from the Lewisburg community.
Defrantz’s lecture touched on a variety of topics such as cultural entanglements and embodied expressions, Black Murder and Creative Recovery, Endangered Species, Liturgical Dancing (Black Churches), Remembering the Dead, Dancing Unlikely Tomorrows, Memory as underpinning for Black Sociality and Dancing Flesh. The talk was enlightening because as someone who has not reflected on dance as an art form that tells stories and is triggered from a remembrance even if the dancer has not experienced that event.
Several things that caught my attention the most during the lectures were the dances about lynching and how the dance was reflective of a complex humanity. Also, dance is a symbol of geography and space, how free or disclosed one can feel. Lastly, church dances were also interesting because they told a story and were as seen as an obligation for the dancers because of their religion. The audience overall received the lecture well and had plenty of questions at the end.
—Da’Mirah Vinson