Urban Bush Women Storied Black women-led dance company Urban Bush Women marks more than 35 years of celebrating African diasporic culture through movement with Legacy + Lineage + Liberation. The performance features the premiere of Haint Blu, created during the troupe’s fall residency at Dartmouth College’s Hopkins Center for the Arts. The multidisciplinary work uses dance and theater to investigate themes of memory, magic, ancestry and equity. Other featured pieces include works by Urban Bush Women founder Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. A discussion with the artists follows the Saturday show.
'Dido Reimagined' Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, one of the earliest known English operas, recounts the story of the queen of Carthage’s doomed love for the mythical founder of Rome. Now, the Hopkins Center for the Arts has commissioned a reimagining of that classic work for the modern era. The Brentano String Quartet and soprano Dawn Upshaw bring Dido to raw, vulnerable life. Taking listeners deep into Dido’s psyche, the piece combines early English classical pieces with new work from Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Melinda Wagner and librettist Stephanie Fleischmann.
'Viva MOMIX Forever' Audiences in more than 22 countries have been oohing and aahing over dance troupe MOMIX’s fantastical use of props and lighting for decades. Now, in celebration of the group’s 40th anniversary, founder, artistic director and native Vermonter Moses Pendleton returns to Dartmouth College, his alma mater, for three spectacular shows. The two-act set features vignettes from past performances, as well as new pieces: Dancers fly through the air, transform into many-legged extraterrestrials and flash shocking colors like so many birds of paradise. Pendleton gives an artist talk at Dartmouth before the Saturday show, recounting his journey from displaying his family cows at the Caledonia County Fair to directing an international acrobatics sensation.