Chung-Fu Chang

Biography

Chung-Fu Chang is a full professor of dance at Colorado State University, School of Music, Theatre, and Dance. He arrived at CSU in Fall 2003, and teaches all levels of modern dance, improvisation, choreography, and capstone dance concert. At CSU, he received a College of Liberal Arts Academic Enrichment Program Award in 2006, Outstanding Faculty Award from CSU Mortar Board in 2008, and the 2009 Best Teacher Award from CSU Alumni Association. His professorship biographical profile is listed in Who’s Who in America, and he was named one of the honorees of the 2021 Legends of Dance from The Dance Archive, The University of Denver’s Carson Brierly Giffin Dance Library.

From 2003 to 2013, Professor Chang directed the CSU Tour Dance Company, a dance outreach program that served as a cultural ambassador for dance, performing both western and non-western dance repertories for more than eight hundred audience members each year. During his tenure directorship, the company performed more than 150 shows for K-12 and senior centers throughout the Front Range and the Western Slope of Colorado. In 2009 and 2010, the company also performed at the Festival Internacional de Danza Contemporanea Avant Garde in Merida, Mexico and Escuela Secundaria in Kopoma, Mexico.

During Chung Fu’s thirty years dance career, he has choreographed, performed, taught and presented his choreography throughout the United States, Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, Cyprus, England, Greece, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, and Taiwan.

Born in Taiwan, Chung-Fu danced professionally with the country’s internationally renowned Cloud Gate Dance Theatre and Kaohsiung Contemporary Dance Company. In the United States, he has been a guest artist with numerous companies and featured in an array of contemporary choreographers’ work. He has performed works by notable choreographers included Gho Mei-Xiung, Doris Humphrey, Leon Koning, Liang Raye-Rong, José Limón, Lin Hwai-Min, Jim May, and many more.

Chung-Fu’s solo works and performances have been showcased at various dance festivals and major performance venues nationally and internationally. He received a Solo Finalist Placement Award at the 2004 Palm Desert Dance Under the Stars Choreography Festival at McCallum Theatre in California. In 2007, he was invited as a special guest artist for the Grand Prix de Argentina in Buenos Aries, Argentina. In 2009, he performed as a guest artist at the Sala Miguel Covarrubias in the Centro Cultural Universitario of the National University of Mexico, Mexico City and Performática, Puebla, Mexico. In 2011, he was featured as an international guest artist for Tempo Dance Festival in Auckland, New Zealand. In 2012, he was invited to perform with WhiteDice, a renown contemporary Butoh company in Tokyo, Japan. In 2014, he was invited to be an international artist for Sydney Fringe Festival in Sydney, Australia, and many more.

As a choreographer, Chung-Fu has received more than eighty commissioned works from Adelphi University; Aspen Dance Connection; Ballet Nouveau Colorado; Boulder Ballet; Del Mar Ballet; Glenwood Springs Center for the Arts; Ohio Ballet; Rainbow Chorus Colorado;  MOMENTA; Dancing Wheels Company’s Icarus Project; Mulberry Street Theater’s Ear to the Ground Series; Ormao Dance Company; Mesa State University (now Colorado Mesa University); Middle Tennessee State University; San Antonio Metropolitan Ballet; SUNY Geneseo; University of Northern Colorado; Verb Ballets; and the Virginia Intermont College Dance Company in United States.

Other internationally commissioned works include: in Mexico: Compañia Umbral Danza Contemporánea and Danza Libra Contemporánea; in Hong Kong, Arts Connection; in Taiwan: the 2003 Taiwan International Human Rights Film Festival; also in 2000 and 2005 the Asian-Pacific Young Choreographers' Project; Chung-Hwa School of the Arts; Counterpoint Chamber Music; National Tainan Chia-Chi Senior High School Dance Division; National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School Dance Division; Solar Site Dance Company; Tainan University of Technology Dance Department, and more.

Chung-Fu’s choreography, The Last Autumnal Tints was nominated for Dance Magazine’s “Outstanding Student Choreography,” and performed at the Gala at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in 1998. His full evening works have presented at the X and IX Festival Internacional de Danza Contemporanea Avant Garde 2008 and 2009 in Merida, Mexico. In 2013, Verb Ballets of Cleveland premiered and performed an evening of Chang’s repertories in a sold-out concert at The Breen Center for the Performing Arts. In 2014, he had nine dances premiered and performed in Australia, Hong Kong, Mexico, Taiwan, and the United States. In 2014, his duet work was commissioned and performed by Verb Ballets, which partnered with the Martha Graham Dance Company’s Lamentation Variations Project premiered in Cleveland, Ohio, and in 2016, at The Martha Graham Studio Theater in New York City. Chung-Fu has held creative residencies at The Yard in 1999, and at the American Dance Festival International Choreographers’ Residency in 2006. In 1999, he received choreographic grants from the Jerome Foundation.

As a dance educator, Professor Chang’s prior teaching full-time appointments include the University of Florida and Kent State University. He also enjoys teaching Yoga, he has received his YogaFit® Level One Certificate.

Educationally, Chung-Fu Chang was a Chancellor's Fellowship recipient from the University of California, Irvine, where he completed his M.F.A. in Dance in 1998. Previously he received a full, four-year scholarship at The Boston Conservatory, the Walter Terry Memorial Full Scholarship at Harvard University in 1993 and a full scholarship at Jacob’s Pillow Bessie Schönberg Choreography Workshop in 1994, and in 1995 was invited to be a guest dancer by Ms. Schönberg to return at the Pillow. He has served as adjudicator, juror, judge and panelist for the Illinois Arts Council, the Thornton Arts, Sciences, and Humanities Council in Colorado, the Bureau of Cultural Affairs Kaohsiung City Government in Taiwan, and VIII Certamen Interamericano XV Aniversario Dia Internacional de La Danza in Mexico. Chung-Fu served as a distinguished speaker and adjudicator for the 6^th and 10^th International Singapore Young Dance Festival and Experts Seminar. During his free time, Chung-Fu enjoys hiking, swimming, traveling and spending time with his family and friends in Taiwan.