Featuring an award-winning choreographer, virtuosic jazz musicians and numerous other artists, the Hopkins Center for the Arts Visiting Artists Series for 2009-2010 will focus on artistic critiques of America. Through works that examine different facets of the American heritage, the Hop aims to carve a niche for itself as a socially relevant performing arts center in depressed economic times, according to a presentation outlining the schedule by Margaret Lawrence, the Hop's programming director, last Thursday.
"The arts and the transformative experience they offer is quite critical," Lawrence said.
Lawrence said that the series focuses more on the way artists see the country than on art with an Americana theme.
In response to economic pressures, evidenced by the 100-percent increase in ticket prices for Dartmouth students and potential declines in ticket sales, the Hop is offering a socially-conscious program for the upcoming season, Lawrence said.
MacArthur Genius Award-winner Trisha Brown and her postmodernist dance company will open the season with shows Sept. 25 and 26. Their performances will juxtapose the music of 18th century French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau with the quintessentially American marches of John Philip Sousa. The Upper Valley Community Band will be featured in the performance to cement the allusions to small-town America.
Choreographer Bill T. Jones, another MacArthur Genius Award-winner, will present "Fondly Do We Hope Fervently Do We Pray," a multi-medium work fusing dance and theater next April. With its title drawn from Lincoln's second Inaugural Address, the work explores the legacy of Lincoln in American history.
Continuing with the three-year Class Divide Initiative, the Hop will showcase The Classical Theatre of Harlem's reimagining of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, set in the Ninth Ward of post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.
The Bronx-based hip-hop theater troupe Universes shares the theme of New Orleans in "Ameriville," a fusion of song and spoken poetry, on April 13 and 14.
The musical line-up presents a series of concerts in different American music genres, ranging from gospel to contemporary classical music. Honoring gospel pioneer and American music legend Thomas Dorsey, saxophonist Don Byron and his quintet explore this Southern-rooted genre in a collaboration with the Dartmouth College Gospel Choir on Oct. 17.
Appalachia and the rich musical tradition of the region will also be represented in the series by Carolina Chocolate Drops, an African-American string band that performed at the College in 2008.
Jazz, a staple of the American musical idiom, is prominently featured in the Hop's programming. In the tradition of vocal jazz great Ella Fitzgerald, singer Dianne Reeves presents an evening of love songs on Oct. 22.
In the same genre, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra from the Village Vanguard jazz club in New York's Greenwich Village will perform avant-garde big band music.
The Hop's aim to become more socially relevant extends to its classical music offerings for the next year. The Grammy-winning Ying Quartet will premiere a Hop co-commissioned piece by American composer Richard Danielpour.
The St. Lawrence String Quartet will also present a New England premiere of a new work by John Adams, completing the Hop's showcase of the American musical voice on Jan. 28.
America's "melting pot" image is reflected in the eclectic mix of world music that will round out the Hop's season. Sitarists Ravi and Anoushka Shankar will return to the Hop after their 2006 performance for an evening of traditional Indian classical music on Oct. 20.
Tabla drummer Zakir Hussain offers a performance of his newest project, "The Masters of Percussion," which incorporates Bengali drummers and other traditional Indian music. Malian vocalist Rokia Traore's concert program combines West African vocal tradition, Malian music and western jazz and folk styles.
In February, Irish fiddle-player Eileen Ivers will explore the cultural and musical connections between America and the Emerald Isle that were cemented with the mass migration of Irish to America after the potato famine in the mid-19th century. Hungary's Klmn Balogh will bring his band to the Hop for a performance of gypsy folk music, further probing America's musical and cultural heritages.
Several performances, however, stray from the overarching Americana' theme. Pianist Emanuel Ax, a frequent soloist with the New York Philharmonic, and violinist Nicola Benedetti will each give concerts of masterworks in the European classical tradition on Jan. 7 and April 17, respectively. The Reduced Shakespeare Company will present an evening of hilarity in "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)" on April 9.
The Hop will also continue its live, high-definition simulcasts of productions from New York's Metropolitan Opera. This season includes staples of operatic literature including Verdi's "Aida" and Puccini's "Turandot" and operatic superstars Plcido Domingo and Rene Fleming.
The 2009-2010 season at the Hop seems ripe with offerings that contemplate and critique American society and its notions of "American-ness." While some artists have been engaged for their sheer virtuosity, the Hop chose the majority of its programming for the works' relation to these themes, according to Lawrence.
"[The upcoming season offers] a sublime experience in the arts," Lawrence said in her presentation.
The programming aims to engage as many as patrons as possible in a dialogue with artists on American societal values and artistic traditions.
