Frontin is a clown ballet using Lecoq movement as well as 19th century dance styles, gestures, and other material harvested from archival footage of minstrel acts throughout American entertainment history. I feel a direct lineage to blackface performers and the performances they created. Frontin is the beginning of my moving these performers from a place of victimhood to folk heroes. Grappling with the stereotypes and dancing with them at the same time. My goal is to research, develop and create a movement piece that examines the role the black body has played in the creation of American entertainment as well as the black body as entertainment personified.  This piece will also examine where minstrelsy lives in a black performer in the present, and by doing so, the piece makes me the object of investigation for minstrelsy, by asking me “Are you wearing burnt cork as well?”