Global stars, campus-based creators, big themes in Hop's 2019/20 season

Rebecca Bailey
  • Jon Batiste and Stay Human at the Hop
  • Pinchas Zukerman image 1
  • Isango article
  • The Day at the Hop

July 1, 2019—The Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth today unveiled a 2019/20 season that unites internationally recognized talents with innovative collaborations born right on campus.  These powerful performances confront issues of social justice, forced migration, and art as an expression of cultural identity. This season offers immersive and intimate theatrical experiences, as well as major orchestral works from around the world that expand our notions of what an orchestra can be.

 

The season launches at a dynamic time for the Hopkins Center, said Director Mary Lou Aleskie. "This season's program shines a light on our aspirations for the Hopkins Center as a 21st-century nexus for creative collaborations, engaging our community in active exchange with globally renowned artists and thinkers. The Hop is poised to lead the way in creativity and the arts—as it did when it opened in 1962—as a magnet for great performances as well as a developer of new arts experiences of all kinds. With the exciting reopening of the Hood Museum of Art alongside the now firmly established Black Family Visual Arts Center, the Arts District at Dartmouth is set to be an incredibly vibrant place in the coming year."

 

All performances are on view at the new hop.dartmouth.edu, which launches on July 1. The public is invited to hear more about the artists and inspiration behind the Hop's programming at the Season Preview and Launch Party, on Monday, July 15. The event is free and begins at 6 pm with a one-hour, multimedia Season Preview in Spaulding Auditorium, followed at 7 pm by the Season Launch Party on the Hop Cafe Patio.

 

Collaborations Spark Campus Creativity

 

The Hop is a center of research and discovery where students, faculty and visiting artists collaborate on adventurous new work and extend live arts into curriculum across campus. A cornerstone of the Hop's season is the immersive performance installation by Dartmouth music professor Ashley Fure in collaboration with her brother, architect Adam Fure, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. Following acclaimed presentations at New York's Mostly Mozart Festival, The Force of Things: an opera for objects will take over the Moore Theater on Apr. 1-5 for five showings. Other highlights of this year's homegrown talent include:

 

  • On Oct. 19, the Barbary Coast Jazz Ensemble shares the stage with jazz legend Carla Bley and her trio, performing her jazz-orchestra arrangements.
  • On Jan. 17 & 18, the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra (DSO) joins the Martha Graham Dance Ensemble as accompaniment for Graham/Aaron Copland's iconic Appalachian Spring.
  • The DSO and Coast combine on Feb. 21 & 22 to perform a Shakespeare-themed evening including a new oratorio by Coast Director Taylor Ho Bynum, along with other related symphonic and jazz works.
  • On May 22 & 23, the DSO joins forces with the Dartmouth College Glee Club and the Handel Society chorus and others to perform Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, a landmark work both for its evocative music and its aching exploration of the costs of war.
  • The Department of Theater brings three productions of compelling new plays: The Living (November 8-17), which takes us to a plague-stricken 17th-century London; The Sweet Science of Bruising (February 21-March 1), exploring the little-known Victorian subculture of women's boxing; and The Wolves (May 15-24), a portrait of nine young women coming of age as members of a suburban high school soccer team.

 

Globally Renowned Artists

 

The Hop continues to be the place to see and hear many of the world's top performing artists. This season, these include violinist Pinchas Zukerman (Nov. 12); former New York City Ballet prima ballerina and current co-artistic director, Wendy Whelan (Apr. 10 & 11) in a stunning duet, The Day, with "rock-star" cellist Maya Beiser; and Late Night with Stephen Colbert pianist and band leader Jon Batiste (Oct, 4).

 

Social Critique

 

The arts shine a light into challenging social issues in a group of shows gathered under a theme of "Take a Hard Look." Sankofa Danzafro (Sept. 26) offers a vibrant, visceral dance exploring the stories of marginalized Afro-Colombians. The Lebanese rock group Mashrou' Leila (Sept. 28) speaks out for human rights, especially those of LGBT people oppressed under fundamentalist Islam. Cherokee theater artist DeLanna Studi (Jan. 10 & 11) traces the impact of the Trail of Tears along generations of Native people, including her own family, and is presented in conjunction with a Hood Museum project with Native visual artists Kali Spitzer and Will Wilson. And in The Just and the Blind (Jan. 16), three African American male artists—a poet, a musician and a dancer—lead us on a multimedia journey into the world of incarcerated young black men and their families.

 

Cultures in Motion

 

Humans are on the move—and so are cultures! Isango Ensemble (Oct. 22 & 23) imagines Mozart's Magic Flute performed by a close-knit South African black township. Amir ElSaffar and his Rivers of Sound Orchestra (Apr. 23) create a luminous stream blending jazz and Arabic music. CARTOGRAPHY (Apr. 30) draws us into the stories of today's young immigrants, experiences both harrowing and exhilarating. Singer Angélique Kidjo (Apr. 4) pays tribute to the Talking Heads by transporting their classic album Remain in Light back to the roots of its inspiration in West Africa.

 

In the 2018/19 season the Hop presented more than 30 free talks, artist conversations and master classes to enrich the experience of our audience. This year we will be doing even more to share the context and craft of the work we present on stage. The free and feisty Thursday Night Live series will also continue in the Top of the Hop and around campus. Details of these events will be shared at hop.dartmouth.edu starting in September.

 

Tickets

 

Tickets go on sale July 23 for the general public, and beginning July 8 and July 16 for two tiers of Hop members. This season the Hop is offering 40 percent off tickets to all Hop performances and $5 tickets to most films for people age 3-18. In addition, you can save up to 25 percent by buying tickets to multiple performances at one time, either in new thematic packages or by assembling your own list of favorites.