The Western Michigan University Department of Dance invites a guest professor each year to expand the course offerings and experiences for students. Carlos Funn is a guest professor who taught freshman modern and African dance during the fall 2018 semester. This is the first time that Dance has offered a non-western dance class and West African dance is a new experience for our students.
Carlos Funn received his MFA in Screen Dance from the University of Michigan and a BFA in Dance and Choreography from Virginia Commonwealth University. His background in dance includes urban diasporic dance styles (hip-hop), house, West African diasporic styles, Capoeira, Tiger and Crane Kung fu, Aikido, Kali as well as training in modern dance, contact improv and ballet.
In addition to this eclectic dance background, he classifies himself as an interdisciplinary artist; including dance, media, film and photography. His career as an independent dancer has sometimes focused heavily in one medium or another but always involved dance in some way. Funn went back to grad school because he always knew he would like to work in academia. “It’s actually kinda like a little home base and you get to work with the next generation and work out some of your ideas that you’re going to take back to your own practice.”
Funn was interested in teaching at Western Michigan University because of our three-tiered approach, with a curriculum focused on modern, jazz and ballet. “And I’m kind of this post-modernist, kind of this slash, slash, slash, it’s a perfect fit,” Funn said. It’s the Dance department’s ability to honor the past and traditional teaching while looking forward to the next new thing that sets WMU apart from other schools. Teaching in a creative lab format, you never know how the day will unfold in Funn’s class. They work toward curriculum goals each day, but the format used changes from day to day. Taking an African dance class might be a very new experience for some dance students. Students who come from studio dance backgrounds or who have studied ballet more than other forms are used to moving in a more upward fashion, while Funn uses the ground as a material to spring from. Funn works to develop his students into thinking artists who are ready to thrive inside of class and in their careers. He wants his dancers to use their spatial awareness and to be able to make the best use of the whole dance space in their work.
For spring 2019, Carlos Funn is teaching DANC 1020 Beginning Jazz, DANC 1810 Dance Improvisation and DANC 1250 African Dance.