The Hopkins Center jumps right into a packed spring term featuring lively performances by prominent visiting artists, thought-provoking film specials and innovative student works.
On April 7, the Hop will feature a performance by the Swingles Singers, a prominent London-based a cappella group that was created in the 1960s and is performing with its third generation of singers.
Hop programming director Margaret Lawrence said that the group has been known to perform everything from pop music to Bach.
“They have the most amazing blend of sound, almost as if it’s something that’s made out of silver,” Lawrence said. “I can’t even describe it, it’s just really beautiful music.”
Following the Swingles, Brazilian dance company Companhia Urbana de Dança will be visiting campus for a week. They will perform with student dance groups, including South African Fusion dance team Raaz and Fusion, in Collis Common Ground and are hosting a master class open to the public.
The group will also perform two types of dance pieces in the Moore Theater. One will be a more serious piece about racial identity in Brazil, while the second will be a “party dance” with dancers attempting to out-perform one another on stage, Lawrence said.
“The basic vocabulary of the dances by this group is hip-hop, but with the help of the director, the performances are formed into dances that tell stories and make something more visually spectacular by involving large number of dancers and juxtaposing their movement,” Hop programming director Rebecca Bailey said. “Their dances really retain a connection to the dancers and personal stories.”
Two-time Grammy winner Maria Schneider will visit Dartmouth for a jazz performance on April 19 in Spaulding Auditorium.
“[Schneider’s] band features eighteen players, which makes her jazz music almost orchestral,” Bailey said. “Her band has really great, versatile players. Each of them contribute so much to the texture, and Maria Schneider’s compositions are really lush, beautiful music that has a powerful, almost physical impact.”
Schneider will also be a part of a panel at the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network on April 18 about digital rights for artists, Lawrence said. The panel will bring Schneider together with faculty from the arts department and an intellectual properties lawyer. The panelists will discuss the experience of artists and their needs and challenges with regards to intellectual property.
On April 26, Grammy-award winner and musician Ang élique Kidjo will visit. Featuring a fusion of music genres including R&B, jazz and the sounds of the artist’s native West Africa, Kidjo’s performances will not only bring pleasure to the listener but also motivate them to get up and dance, Bailey said.
“The post-performance conversation with her should also be very interesting, since Kidjo uses her music to bring attention to human rights issues,” Bailey said.
At Rollins Chapel, music group Ensemble Sequentia will perform little-known pieces from the medieval period on April 28. The group will perform non-sacred works that were composed in the pre-Christian era.
“We wanted performances that didn’t feel like a museum piece,” Bailey said. “Ensemble Sequentia’s music is wonderfully researched, but when you hear them perform, you don’t hear the research; you’re drawn into the experience.”
Student performances at the Hop this term will include ones by the Gospel Choir, the Dartmouth College Glee Club and the Dartmouth College Wind Ensemble, which will feature a student conductor, Jacob Weiss ’16.
Starting on May 1, student musicians, such as Ensemble Mise-en, Wind Ensemble and Glee Club, will be featured in the “New Music Festival: Music, Soundspace, and Architecture,” a series of musical events that will explore how sounds can be inspired by virtual and physical spaces.
“It’s an exciting way to see what your fellow students are doing with music on campus in a more contemporary, innovative route, and it really showcases the adventurous spirit of music with the arts,” Bailey said.
Film will continue to play a large role in Hop programming. The Dartmouth Film Society will feature film specials and live guests relating to the theme of “Family Business,” Hop film manager and programmer Johanna Evans said.
Radheshwar Arora ’18 proposed the theme based on his experience watching the two part, five-hour Indian epic “Gangs of Wasseypur” (2012), Evans said.
“He said he wanted to create a series where [‘Gangs of Wasseypur’] and ‘The Godfather’ were the anchor films, to explore feelings of tension and crime and other things and finding where the two films overlap,” Evans said.
Because there aren’t a large number of multi-generational crime epics, the DFS decided to expand the scope of the theme to films that include different familial dynamics, Evans said.
The series will include “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” (1989), in which Jones’ father is also an archaeologist, and “Creed” (2015), in which protagonist Adonis is following in the footsteps of his father, Apollo Creed.
The DFS will collaborate with Programming Board on April 7 to present the documentary “In My Father’s House” (2015) by Anne Sundberg ’90 and Ricki Stern ’87. The documentary tells the story of rapper Che “Rhymefest” Smith reconnecting with his estranged father and touches on issues of race, class, poverty and family, Evans said.
Rhymefest will speak at the end of the screening along with the directors of the documentary and will perform in a concert that weekend.
Hop films will include works that discuss political and socioeconomic issues relevant to contemporary American society, Evans said. Such works include “Requiem for the American Dream” (2015), which features Noam Chomsky and discusses wealth inequality, and “Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People” (2014), a documentary by current Montgomery Fellow Thomas Allen Harris that discusses how white photographers have portrayed black Americans in certain, disparate ways that are often innacurate, Evans said.
“A lot of students might not come seeking films at the Hop because they might think that we present films from an academic perspective, but that’s not it at all,” Evans said. “We’re interested in the power of storytelling and the messages that film can convey as well as looking at it as an art form.”
