He is excited to bring food and culture to the forefront as program director of UD’s Food and Culture Festival taking place Feb. 2-7 at the Roger Glass Center for the Arts and the Sears Recital Hall. The programming includes a roundtable dialogue with local culinary artists, a panel discussion on food, access and justice, a performance by Dayton Opera and a keynote address from African-American Jewish writer, culinary historian and educator Michael Twitty who is also serving a campus residency.
Exploring all the varied facets of storytelling through food is a critical component of the programming.
“Everybody eats,” Dorf said. “Everybody eats multiple times a day — if they’re lucky. Many of us have the resources to (allow) food (to) be an adventure. We all make decisions about what we eat, which reflects who we are, where we live and who we share that food with. And I think those stories are important and it’s something everybody can relate to as a way of exploring and celebrating the humanities through something that is universal.”
Dorf, professor of musicology in the UD Department of Music, is a musicologist and dance historian who works with classical texts and modern reception of the ancient world. His book, “Performing Antiquity: Ancient Greek Music and Dance from Paris to Delphi: 1890-1933,” examined the interaction among scientists, humanities scholars and artists as they sought to perform and reinvent ancient Greek music and dance in turn-of-the-century Paris and Delphi.
He was awarded a $10,000 Special Projects grant from Culture Works to support his festival programming.
“We want people to talk about food, think about food and ask questions about food,” Dorf said. “I hope people are inspired to explore the humanities in new ways and think about food as exploration and storytelling in new ways.”
The schedule of events include:
- Serving Plates and Serving Stories: A Conversation with Dayton Culinary Artists at 5:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 2, in the Roger Glass Center for the Arts Concert Hall, 29 Creative Way. Free and open to the public.
- Stories of Growing and Giving: Food, Access and Justice in the Dayton Region at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 3, in the Jesse Philips Humanities Center’s Sears Recital Hall, 300 College Park. Free and open to the public.
- A keynote address by Michael Twitty at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 5, in the Roger Glass Center for the Arts Concert Hall, 29 Creative Way. Free, ticketed event.
- Dayton Opera performances of Lee Hoiby’s “Bon Appetit” (1981) and Shawn Okpebholo’s “The Cook Off” (2023) at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 6 and at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 7 in the Roger Glass Center for the Arts Concert Hall, 29 Creative Way. Visit daytonperformingarts.org for ticket information.
Dorf hopes the festival will bring renewed interest to the broad fabric of diverse storytelling that can be derived from food and culture.
“I hope folks around the community wherever they shop — Gem City Market, Dorothy Lane Market, Kroger, Trader Joe’s — develop a new appreciation for how food tells our unique stories, whether they’re Dayton stories, Midwestern stories, American Southern stories or Taiwanese stories,” he said.