Visiting Artist Tina Mullone will give an interactive movement class on the Umfundalai technique and talk on African and African American contemporary dance forms—specifically, on the Black body as confined and shaped by space.

Tina Mullone (BA, MFA) is Assistant Professor of Dance at Bridgewater State University and a New England board member for the American College Dance Association. Tina’s current research interests are centered around African Diaspora dance, dance as a conduit for change, African-Americans and the spaces that define/confine, the presence of spirituality in dance, Black feminism in movement & visual art, Arts education, and movement-based therapy as a result of trauma.

Umfundalai is a contemporary African dance technique that comprises its movement vocabulary from dance traditions throughout the Diaspora.  The literal word, Umfundalai, means “essential” in Kiswahili.  Much like Katherine Dunham, the late Kariamu Welsh, D. Arts, Umfundalai’s progenitor, has designed a stylized movement practice that seeks to articulate an essence of African – oriented movement or as she has described, “an approach to movement that is wholistic, body centric and organic.”