On Friday, the multimedia spectacle "Igniting Imagination" organized in honor of the Hopkins Center's 50th Anniversary Celebration Weekend showcased the diverse artistic accomplishments of the College's students and alumni through a series of segments that included singing, dancing, theater and film. The performance included five featured guests Broadway actress Jennifer Leigh Warren '77, comedians Aisha Tyler '92 and Rachel Dratch '88, filmmaker Ken Burns and singer Michael Odokara-Okigbo '12. The show, directed by Gospel Choir director Walt Cunningham, included a variety of performances by current students who are involved in the arts.
"We wanted to represent everything that goes on here," Cunningham said. "No matter how daunting that task may have been, from digital art to a cappella to acting to dance."
However, the wide assortment of segments, from music synthesizing to a double-handed piano performance, made "Igniting Imagination" a disjointed experience that seemed to have enjoyed very little rehearsal time for example, Tyler, who served as the show's host, read her lines from an iPad.
On their own, the acts themselves did showcase true talent. The opening number, "Get This Party Started," married performances of current undergraduates with the talents of Warren, a critically acclaimed actress and singer, known for her numerous roles on Broadway. Phoebe Bodurtha '15, who was a finalist in last year's "Dartmouth Idol" competition, sang with Warren as members from Sugarplum dance ensemble performed a corresponding routine.
Sketches performed by Dratch, famed for her tenure on "Saturday Night Live," were another highlight of the evening. She first came on stage in a blond wig, mocking the quintessential Dartmouth alumna stereotype. Dressed as a WASP-y housewife who met her husband in Alpha Delta fraternity's basement and speaking proudly of her children Topliff, Hitchcock and little Mid-Mass Dratch echoed her Dartmouth chapter from her recent memoir, "A Girl Walks into a Bar."
Her later sketch with Tyler was also a highlight of "Igniting Imagination." The skit featured a long conversation consisting solely of Dartmouth lingo, including references ranging from the Dartmouth Seven to frat flats to facetime on First-Floor Berry.
"That reminds me we have to drop by Sussell Rage because I promised one of my trippees I'd hang out at this pregame," Tyler said. "It's going to be all randos and totally awk."
Tyler, who constantly poked fun at how old she felt returning to campus, was initially welcomed on stage as host by four current members of the all-female a cappella group the Rockapellas. Tyler, who co-hosts the hit CBS daytime talk show "The Talk," set a light tone for the night, complaining not only of her old age but also of the shortness of the tribute song sung to her by the Rockapellas, a group she helped found as an undergraduate.
"In the tradition of returning alumni before me, I am going to go to my old house and dance strangely to some old hip-hop then lay down in a cold place to die," Tyler said. "If you want to find my body, it'll be in the Bema."
The second song-based performance of the night was an a cappella group ensemble, which she dubbed "A Ca-Smash." Led by last year's "Dartmouth Idol" winner Monte Reed '12, the group performed a "Rhapsody of the Hopkins Center."
"I wanted the arrangement to be as all-encompassing as possible," Reed said. "Even though we had a very intense rehearsal schedule and it was a grueling process at times, I think the end product was really good quality."
One of the more unique performances of the night was delivered by pianists Lulu Chang '15 and Sarah Wang '14, a performance of "Variations on a Theme of Paganini by Witold Lutoslawski." The piece was played on one piano, instead of the traditional two, and was rearranged by Wang. This segment was one of the few segments that showcased art music, rather than popular music. In addition to the piano variations, the Dartmouth College Wind Ensemble, joined by the Dartmouth College Glee Club, performed the 19th-century piece "Requiem, Op. 5: Das Irae" by French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz. The Glee Club also performed what Tyler called their "now infamous" rendition of "Deep River," arranged by Moses Hogan.
In an effort to portray the multiplicity of art forms offered by the College, musical performances were not limited to artistic pieces and popular music. Members of the College's digital musics department, represented by Xander Arnold '14, Sebastian Berman-Lytle '15, Alec Carvlin '15 and graduate student Carlos Dominguez, showcased the strength of lesser-known musical forms with "Dartmouth Remixed," an electronic "conversation" about what Dartmouth sounds like to them. The unique performance included sounds of Baker Tower's bells and ping pong balls hitting the table during a game of pong in a fraternity basement.
While the majority of the evening's segments were live performances, acclaimed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, an honorary degree recipient and frequent guest of the Hopkins Center, discussed the importance of the arts at Dartmouth, quoting Founding Father John Adams, who said that he studied "politics and war" so that his grandchildren could "study painting, poetry, music, architecture, tapestry and porcelain."
"There is no other place on Earth like this place," Burns said of the Hopkins Center. "No other college has it. No other institution has it. The Hopkins Center truly obliterates mediocrity."
Burns introduced a film made by Chris Robinson '88 and Daniel Maxell-Crosby '02, which compiled recent films directed or produced by Dartmouth alumni, such as "21 Jump Street" (2012) and "Despicable Me" (2010).
The penultimate performance starred Odokara-Okigbo, who took the stage to perform Nat King Cole's "When I Fall in Love" alongside Elizabeth Roberts '00, a local high school student and Gospel Choir vocal coach Janet Salter.
The show closed with a rendition of "We Are Young" by fun., which was sung by the entire ensemble. With strong individual performances all around that integrated the talents of past and present generations of Dartmouth students, "Igniting Imagination" was certainly a night to remember, if not somewhat cluttered. The variety of the acts ensured that the show, while lengthy, was never monotonous.
The goal of "Igniting Imagination," as articulated by director Cunningham, was the celebration of "the totality of art under the Hopkins Center roof." While it successfully showcased the diverse talents of the Dartmouth community, the performance, at times, came off as overproduced.
