In many ways, Monday night's "Dartmouth and the Performing Arts" event in Moore Theater surprised no one. The artistic mash-up which served as the second official event of President Jim Yong Kim's inauguration was rife with superlative music, theater, film and dance performances, diverse artistic mediums and plenty of praise for Kim.
One thing seemed a little off, though: the watch party held in Alumni Hall, where televisions were set up for the live stream of the event, was largely empty. The seats were barely half filled, the hors d'uvres were left mostly untouched, and most surprisingly many students left before the best part. By the time Rachel Dratch '88, Buck Henry '52, Paul Lazarus '76, Jennifer Leigh Warren '77 and Kim arrived at Alumni Hall, only about 50 students were still in the room. Even Dratch, the event's emcee, had something to say about the surprising lack of student attendance.
"There were so many seats left unfilled in [Moore Theater] that I'm not surprised by the lack of people at the watch party," Dratch said in an interview with The Dartmouth. "Dartmouth and the Performing Arts," a series of performances by alumni in the arts and entertainment business, was originally conceived as a tribute to Kim. The diverse group of artists included Edward Kim '09 on piano, David Beach '86 and Courtney Davis '09, who sang two songs from "The Apple Tree," and the Dartmouth Gospel Choir, which performed "America the Beautiful" and "Gonna Be Startin' Something/Lovely Day."
The event also included commissioned videos of Pilobolus, a dance group founded at Dartmouth in 1971, clips of "The Trials of Darryl Hunt" (directed by Ricki Stern '87 and Annie Sundberg '90) and "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" (directed by Chris Miller '97 and Phil Lord '97), and an appearance by Kim himself.
Kim candidly detailed his long and gradual journey to viewing the arts as serving a practical purpose, using humorous anecdotes about his experiences in karaoke bars to engage the audience.
As emcee, Dratch gave an opening monologue and introduced each performer, all the while riffing on the Dartmouth artistic community. Ironically, Dratch, known for her hilarious seven-year run on "Saturday Night Live" said she found it difficult to be funny.` "I kind of hate emceeing, because I like doing characters," Dratch said in an interview with The Dartmouth. "I don't like being myself. I don't mean in real life. I'm not someone who's, like, always in a character. What I mean is, I don't really like performing as myself because I'm not really a stand-up at all."
Nevertheless, Dratch managed to land some quick-witted one-liners. After a group of four rather muscular men from Pilobolus performed "Gnomen" (a routine created by R. Barnett '72 and J. Wolken '71) in tiny black spandex shorts (and nothing else), Dratch pranced onto the stage and quipped: "President Kim was right. You don't need lots of funding or fancy instruments to find an outlet for artistic expression all you need is a pair of tiny black shorts."
"That was the only line I made up in the moment, like, on the spot, and it turned out to be my best line," she explained. "But seriously, those Pilobolus guys: I was thinking if I were a guy and I were hosting, I would have just turned to the audience and been like, I think I just turned gay.' It was so homoerotic."
Dratch said she was surprised by how much Dartmouth had changed since she was last on campus.
"Dartmouth seems a little more diverse and liberal, because when I was here it was, like, super right wing. Well, to me anyway," Dratch said. "Overall, it just seems a lot more fun and relaxed."
Buck Henry '52, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of "The Graduate," was tapped to perform a reading of "The Lorax," by Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel '25).
"Being back at Dartmouth ... it's very nostalgic, sometimes depressing and sometimes terrific," Henry said in an interview with The Dartmouth." The weather helps with that, though when the weather's good, it's fantastic. When it's like this, it's amazing."
Even though the cast only had one dress rehearsal and some of the performers did not know what they would doing until a few days before the event, Henry said that everyone involved was very relaxed.
"No one was nervous, because they were all doing their very own sort of thing. It wasn't like we were learning Chekhov with each other, after all," Henry said. "I mean, they told me I had this piece by Seuss a few weeks ago, so I knew what it was going to be. And then everybody started adding certain things once we got on stage of course. But other than a few setbacks we added the slides a few hours before the event it was all fairly easy."
Henry added his own touch to his performance, pulling out a pink fluff-ball at the end of his reading to represent the Truffula trees from the book.
Then he threw it into the audience as if he were passing on the Lorax's and Dr. Seuss's message to all of those who were listening.
