February 21, 2023, 5:00 PM to 7:30 PM
@Gore Recital Hall
Lecture/Talk, Paul R. Jones Initiative
Paul R. Jones Annual Distinguished Lecture: John O. Perpener III:
The Paul R. Jones Annual Lecture honors Paul R. Jones and his gift of African American art to the University of Delaware. Sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences, the Annual Lecture underscores the significance of Black arts to humanistic studies and showcases individuals whose contributions to the field are exemplary, interdisciplinary, and inspiring.
The 2023 Paul R. Jones Distinguished Lecture, African-American Concert Dancers: Activism, Advocacy, and Protest will be given by John O. Perpener III, dance historian and scholar. Perpener authored the book African-American Concert Dance: The Harlem Renaissance and Beyond and served as a primary consultant and commentator for the PBS documentary “Free to Dance.” He has worked with the Hartford Ballet Company, the D.C. Black Repertory Dance Company and the Maryland Dance Theater.
The lecture will be held in the Gore Recital Hall in the Roselle Center for the Arts, beginning at 5 p.m. Registration is required. A livestream also will be available.
UD offers several related events: a unique theater experience titled Suite Blackness: Black Dance in Cinema (February 16 – 18), and an art exhibit related to Black dance in Mechanical Hall (opens February 7).
Suite Blackness: Black Dance in Cinema
The production is a journey through racial and cultural tensions from the 1920s to present day, revealed through films such as “Stormy Weather” (1943), “The Wiz” (1978), “School Daze” (1988) and “Rize” (2005). Artists such as Bill Bojangles Robinson, Katherine Dunham, Josephine Baker and Michael Jackson will also be showcased.
The show is a collaboration between the faculty in UD’s departments of theater and dance, the REP Theater and choreographers, dancers, poets and singers from Wilmington, Newark, Dover and Baltimore. Lessons are also being developed to share with K-12 schools in collaboration with the Delaware Institute for Arts in Education.
Mechanical Hall Display
The exhibit features five works of art celebrating dance from a variety of perspectives.
Four photographs, gifts to UD’s Museums from Paul R. Jones, reflect various aspects of Black dance culture as seen through the lenses of two prominent African American photographers, Jim Alexander and Ming Smith. They explore the inspirational role of prominent leaders in the dance community, a dramatic moment of a performance, and the sense of exuberance that dance can bring. A lithograph, donated to the Museums by the Brandywine Workshop, is by prominent Jamaican-born artist, Keith Morrison and represents the energy of dance in an entirely abstract mode.
John O. Perpener III
John O. Perpener III is a dance historian and independent scholar based in Charlotte, NC. He received a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from New York University and a MFA in Dance from Southern Methodist University. He has held teaching positions at Florida State University, the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, the University of Maryland, College Park, and at Howard University.
His book, African-American Concert Dance: The Harlem Renaissance and Beyond, was published by the University of Illinois Press in 2001.He also served as a primary consultant and commentator for the PBS documentary on African-American dance, Free to Dance. As a dancer and choreographer, he worked with the Hartford Ballet Company, the D.C. Black Repertory Dance Company, and the Maryland Dance Theater. More recently, he performed in Visible, co-choreographed by Nor Chipaumire and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. Gia Kourlas of the New York Times wrote, “Oddly, it’s Mr. Perpener, a dance historian, who anchors ‘Visible’ with the gravity it deserves and the lightness it needs. That he understands dance is more than evident in his scholarship; the surprise here is how he knows how to own a stage.” He recieved a National Endowment for the Humanites Fellowship (2012-2013) for his project on African-American concert dancers and the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. And, in 2014-2015, he was a Fellow at New York’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.