ON FIRE WITH AFRICAN DANCE- Staccato Incandescence: The Story of Mambo with Robert Farris Thompson

Robert Farris Thompson, Master T, the Colonel John Trumbull Professor of the History of Art at Yale University will focus his lecture on mambo which shows a fusion of a variety of dance styles from Lindy, to ballet, to bomba, to Afro-Cuban dance.

Painting of Robert Farris Thompson. Courtesy of the artist Simmie KnoxRobert Farris Thompson is America's most prominent scholar of African Art, and has presided over exhibitions of African art at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. He lived in the Yoruba region of southwest Nigeria for many years while he conducted his research of Yoruba arts history. He affiliated with the University of Ibadan and Yoruba village communities. Thompson has studied the African arts of the diaspora in the United States, Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and several Caribbean islands. Robert Farris Thompson is also an authority in hip hop. Cornel West, who teaches African American studies at Princeton, calls this white man from Texas “my dear brother” and “one of the greatest pioneers in the study of Afro-American culture and African culture.”

ON FIRE WITH AFRICAN DANCE
Presented by
The Committee for the Jerome Robbins Dance Division
and
Jerome Robbins Dance Division
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

Produced by
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts