Dancing Revelations: Alvin Ailey's Embodiment of African American Culture - Hardcover

DeFrantz, Thomas F.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195154193 ISBN 13: 9780195154191

Publisher: OUP USA, 2003

Synopsis

In the early 1960s, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater was a small, multi-racial company of dancers that performed the avant-garde works of its founding choreographer. By the late 1960s, the company had become a well-known African-American artistic group closely tied to the Civil Rights struggle and the Black Arts movement. In Dancing Revelations, Thomas DeFrantz chronicles the troupe's journey from small modern dance company to one of the premier institutions of African-American culture. DeFrantz charts the Ailey Theater's rise to national and international renown and contextualizes its progress within the civil rights, women's rights, and gay rights struggles of the late 20th century. In addition, DeFrantz analyses all the major dances in the Aily repertoire, examining the relationship between those works and African-American culture as a whole. As the first book to examine the cultural sources and cultural impact of Ailey's work, Dancing Revelations makes an important contribution to modern dance history and criticism as well as African-American studies.

About this title

About the Author

Thomas DeFrantz earned degrees from Yale, the City University of New York, and the Performance Studies Department of New York University. He organized the dance history program at the Ailey School, and is editor ofDancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance. His writings have appeared in theEncyclopedia of African American Culture and History, and the Village Voice. Also a performer and choreographer, DeFrantz has taught at NYU and Stanford University. He is currently Associate Professor of Theater Arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP USA
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195154193
• ISBN 13: 9780195154191
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288