FALL 2023
Mellon Symposium

Embodied researchers, all specialists in Black Dance and Black social formations, gather to imagine relevant research methods that underscore the theoretical and experiential complexity of movements we call Black Social Dance in the first event of this multi-year research project.

Fall 2023 Mellon Symposium: Highlights

October 12-14, 2023

Wirtz Chicago

Abbott Hall | 710 N Lakeshore Drive

A meeting of the multi-year SLIPPAGE project Black Dance and Geographies of Freedom convened by SLIPPAGE artistic director Thomas F. DeFrantz and supported by a grant from the Mellon Foundation, gathers advanced thought-in-motion around Black Social Dance practices, to create an organizational scaffolding that can elaborate thinking and moving in narratives of liberation.

ALL EVENTS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

Sponsored by the Mellon Foundation, SLIPPAGE, and Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities

About the Researchers:

Direct from the researchers:

How does Black social dance move through culture, space and time? Hear directly from the researchers, in their own words.

Social justice + civic engagement

Mellon Foundation + SLIPPAGE + Higher Learning

SLIPPAGE is thrilled to announce funding support from the Mellon Foundation to support our work in Black Dance Studies from 2023-2025.

This multi-year grant expands a research project focused on local Black dance practices, national African American identity, and global Black freedom, gathering 30+ embodied researchers in four US cities over three years and producing a volume of future-forward thoughtOpens a new window reflecting both hyperlocal yet universally relevant cultural production and practice.

Read the announcement or learn more about each gathering in each link box to the right.

FALL 2023
Mellon Symposium