Ph.D (1997)
Associate Professor of Music and Theatre Arts
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"I found performance studies as a space in the academy open to dance and corporeality studies. As a musical theater choreographer moving towards dance theater, performance studies offered a methodology for thinking through my own aeshetic motives, as well as the process of documenting those of others. As I began to engage in graduate work, I became fascinated by the many ways to imagine contexts for performance - including those that I continued to invent . My solo piece Monk's Mood:A Performance Meditation on the Life and Music of Thelonious Monk emerged not from a single course or faculty mentor within PS, but rather from the cumulative process of reflecting on the discipline of performance studies as a paradigm for something I might term corporeal investigation."
Tommy received his BA in Music Composition and Theater Studies from Yale and his MA in Liberal Studies from City College of New York before entering the PhD program in Performance Studies at NYU. Upon graduating, he was hired on at MIT where has continued to perform, direct, and choreograph in addition to publishing and lecturing on African American Culture and performance. Thomas was on the editorial board for the Society of Dance History Scholars from 1996- 2002 as well as the board of directors from 1999-2002. At MIT, he served on the Women's Studies Steering Committee from 1999-2001.
Tommy's first book is an edited anthology entitled Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance for the SDHS series Studies in Dance History. He also has a second book forthcoming, Revelations: Alvin Ailey’s Embodiment of African American Culture, and has contributed chapters to various edited volumes on dance. He serves as archivist for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, organizes the dance history program at the Ailey school, and recently choreographed Paul Robeson, All-American, by Ossie Davis. He also collaborated with Ballet Hispanico on Border Crossings, and is active with the Theater Offensive of Boston, who will produce his original musical play, Queer Theory: An Academic Travesty, in 2003. Professor DeFrantz is a member of the Drama League of New York, the Dance Critics Association, serves on the editorial board of the Society of Dance History Scholars, and is recipient of grants from the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.
