By Brittany Dekorte
Editor
A new, performance-based class is coming to Washtenaw Community College this winter semester.
The class, MUS 214: Advanced Performance Art Ensemble, is meant “for students with intermediate to advanced proficiency in instrumental, vocal, dance, visual, media, or story-based performance art,” according to the description on the school’s website.
Michael Naylor, a professor in the music department at WCC, says he hopes the class will promote artistic and creative thinking.
“Art and artists have always had a role to create without an agenda to entertain, popularize, or conform to socio-cultural expectations. Yet to learn to think out of the box, is not a skill that just happens, it has to be learned,” said Naylor.
Students who take this class will create, practice and perform original art, and learn the technique required of professional performers.
As a group, the class will collaborate to create a performance using the sum total of artistic skills and perform the works at the semester’s end.
The first session of the class will be taught by Joanna Goldstein, who is a new professor at WCC. Goldstein plans on having a few “pop up” performances on campus, and a formal performance at the end of the term on April 23. All performances will be open to everyone at WCC and the surrounding community.
To be eligible to take MUS 214, students must have academic reading and writing levels of 6, and have taken any 100 level music (MUS) course except for MUS 147, MUS 162 or MUS 165 in the past. The course may be completed for credit up to a maximum of three times.
