Mark Broomfield

Background

About Mark Broomfield

Dance scholar and artist “moving minds, moving bodies and moving souls” to advance transformational social change and policies. Mark has over 20 years experience in the performing arts as a professional dancer, artist, choreographer, director, writer, scholar and educator. Mark Broomfield (PhD, MFA), Associate Professor of English and Founding Director of Performance as Social Change at SUNY Geneseo, is an award-winning scholar and artist with numerous publications in the areas of race, gender, sexuality, dance performance and ethnography. Broomfield has performed nationally and internationally, and danced with the repertory company Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, performing in leading works by some of the most diverse and recognized African American choreographers in the American modern dance tradition. An innovative educator and facilitator, Broomfield has lectured, choreographed, and directed widely across the U.S. His scholarship focuses on reimagining masculinity and embodied gender performance for transformational social change in the twenty-first century. His first book, Black Queer Dance: Gay Men and the Politics of Passing for Almost Straight, is forthcoming by Routledge; it examines the key role of black queer male dancers to understanding strategic gender performances on and offstage. A groundbreaking exploration of black masculinity and sexual passing in dance, the book explores the political dimensions of “coming out” versus “doing out” in American culture of the twentieth and twenty-first century. The book features the acclaimed dancer-choreographers Desmond Richardson and Dwight Rhoden Co-Artistic Directors of Complexions Contemporary Ballet and Ronald K. Brown, Artistic Director of Evidence. By examining the tensions between narratives of post-gay and post-race, Broomfield demonstrates how black queer, gender nonconforming and nonbinary men expose the illusions of gender performance. His upcoming documentary Danced Out tells the story about professional black male ballet and contemporary dancers, in New York City, who are gay. The dancers reveal the unique function of gay men in society and their surprising insights on masculinity in our culture. Among Broomfield’s awards and recognitions are the Institute for Citizens and Scholars Career Enhancement Fellowship (formerly the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation), the SUNY Faculty Diversity Award, the Ford Foundation Fellowship and is featured in the 2001 Emmy Award winning Ailey Camp "Chowdah" Production.