Dance Historian Dr. Lynn Matluck Brooks

will discuss the composer Francis Johnson, whose music is the inspiration for Putty Dance Project’s work premiering in DANCE UP CLOSE.

A central figure in Philadelphia’s vibrant dance and music scene in the antebellum period Francis Johnson (1792–1844) was a musician, composer, teacher, bandleader, conductor, and creator of scintillating music and dances. He worked in theaters, ballrooms, concert halls, militia parades, and churches, where he was employed by, and collaborated with, the city’s cultural, economic, and political elites. He crossed lines including those bounding genres, sites, and professional engagements, a boundary-crossing, all the more notable because Johnson was an African American resident of Philadelphia at a time when the city’s population was marked by lines of race, class, and ethnicity, among other factors.

Yet Johnson and his Black band of musicians performed at the fashionable Chestnut Street Theatre, created and played music at the most elegant balls for the city’s powerful upper-class, and served as the band and composer of choice for the most elite (white) militia units in Philadelphia. He conducted orchestras that presented the latest European musical hits including works of Bellini, Mozart, and Rossini, along with Johnson’s own compositions, and Johnson with his Black Band traveled to Europe for a highly successful tour of England and France, where he met leading composers and conductors of the period. Johnson became the most published United States composer of his age, eagerly sought after by the city’s best music publishers. His brilliant musical works, many associated with dancing, reveal an originality of vision that laid the groundwork for later developments in American and, notably, African American music. The world that Johnson so ingeniously engaged with, his contributions to Philadelphia, his colleagues and

Dr. Lynn Matluck Brooks, Arthur and Katherine Shadek Humanities Professor Emerita at Franklin & Marshall College, founded F&M’s Dance Program in 1984. Her recognitions include the Dewey Award for Outstanding Scholarship and the Lindback Award for Teaching, as well as grants from the Fulbright/Hayes Commission, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. As a scholar, Brooks has presented her work and research worldwide. She has been a reviewer for Dance Magazine, editor of Dance Research Journal and Dance Chronicle, and writer/editor for Philadelphia’s thINKingDance. She has written several books, the most recent being Theatres of the Body: Dance and Discourse in Antebellum Philadelphia.