24 at 4:30PM)

HOOP OF LIFE with Ty Defoe/ Gi izhig (Oneida/Ojibwe Nations)

This event will include interactive tribal songs and flute, hoop, and eagle dances. This unique program explores stories within a framework of traditional and contemporary culture, history, and values. Ty draws on his vast repertoire gifted to him weaves urban anecdotes and teachings that can be applied to ideas of shape-shifting and how this relates to identity. Walking in multiple worlds on earth is what Ty carries as he weaves stories and humanity together. Storytelling is often discovered with a presenting a message. For example the Sacred Hoop Dance is a metaphor that gives a message of people creating unity. The four colors of the hoops are symbols of interdependence and unity – the four human races, the four seasons, the four directions of the compass. As the Hoops move they speak of renewed creation of all of the universe.

Upper Tarble

4:30-6PM

April 24, 2018

https://swatcentral.swarthmore.edu/?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D288012818

Dance Matters Too! Professor Pallabi Chakravorty’s Latest Book

Professor Pallabi Chakravorty of the Swarthmore Music and DanceDepartment has had a busy year. Despite her abrupt sabbatical due to a back injury, Professor Chakravorty has published two books within the past year that she has been working for close to a decade: This is How We DanceNow! Performance in the Age of Bollywood and Reality Shows, published in October of 2017, and Dance Matters Too: Memories, Markets, Identities, which was published in India this past March and is forthcoming in the United States.

Dance Matters Too was inspired by a conference Professor Chakravorty attended that sparked conversations about the nature of classical Indian performance in the face of contemporary global changes. People from all over the world interested in classical Indian dance gathered at this international conference to address their diverse experiences in the field, and when Professor Chakravorty and her co-editor Nilanjana Gupta sent out calls for papers, they were surprised by the influx of articles from scholars anddancers all over the world.

The book is divided into sections loosely separated by historical significance. The first looks at the history of the style itself and what remains of classical Indian dance now. The second part looks at the current influence and fusion of popular culture on Indian dance. It investigates the role of globalization ofdance alongside shifting ideas of Indian national identity. The final section deals with the creation of subnational identity through the development of regional styles of classical Indian dance.

When asked what inspired her to do the research for her article, titled “Cosmopolitan Then and Cosmopolitan Now: Rabindranrtiya Meets DanceReality Shows,” in Dance Matters Too, she referenced her own experiences as a Kathak-trained dancer.

“I became very interested in challenging myself. I have a certain mindset about aesthetics. We develop strong tastes and preferences as dancers if you are trained in certain ways…so it creates a mindset and I wanted to challenge that. I’ve always been very fond of Bombay films, which after the 1980s, after liberalization, became Bollywood. It is much more global and spectacle-oriented, prior to [Bombay films] that were more classically oriented and had folk forms.”

Professor Chakravorty’s fieldwork for This is How We Dance Now, which she also used for her article in Dance Matters Too, has taken her to the sets of Bollywood films to work and dance alongside young Bollywood dancers. “It was a challenge. What I first learned was I am not a Bollywood dancer…After being exposed to that kind of movement and energy, high energy movement that is not line oriented but spectacle oriented, I thought there’s something there. These people are enjoying [what they’re doing]. Through these interactions, I saw how versatile they were, how fabulous they are asdancers. It’s a different kind of dance and I have tremendous respect for what they’re doing.”

Once her most recently published book, Dance Matters Too, is available in the United States, Professor Chakravorty hopes to see forums for writers anddancers to write about dance, giving more visibility and accessibility to dancestudies and dance scholarship.

“I want more people to do dance research in different venues, so that writing becomes a part of the culture of dance, to think about dance not in isolation, that it’s this esoteric world, but that dance is connected to other things.Dance is first and foremost culture…so [I want people] to understand how it is part of culture and why it changes, how it is dynamic and cross-cultural, and to make people competent in cross-cultural understanding.”

Dance Matters Too: Memories, Markets, Identities contributes to these forums and will offer insight on the ever-shifting nature of Indian dance in an increasingly global world, providing its readers with compelling reasons for the continued study and appreciation for a variety of dance forms.

Marion Kudla ’19

Tamagawa Taiko Returns to Swarthmore

Tamagawa Taiko Drum and Dance Group has a long history with Swarthmore’s Dance and Music programs, spanning eighteen years of performances and workshops. Professor Kim Arrow, Swarthmore Taiko professor, first met Tamagawa Taiko director Isaburoh Hanayagi in 1999 at a dance festival in Philadelphia. The two of them–one an expert in Japanese performing arts and one a dance professor with a budding interest in taiko–arranged Swarthmore’s first Tamagawa Taiko performance the following year. Although lightly publicized, the concert was sold out, setting the standard for annual performances since.

In addition to regular taiko performances, Isaburoh has held multiple workshops in dance, taiko, and kabuki theater, extending the relationship between Swarthmore and Tamagawa beyond just the taiko programs. In 2002, a delegation from Tamagawa traveled to Swarthmore to consult with various faculty and administrators in establishing the first Department of Liberal Arts in Japan at Tamagawa University. Later, Swarthmore President Al Bloom and Tamagawa President Yoshiaki Obara would establish an official Sister Relationship between the two institutions, symbolized by the hanging of printed cherry blossom fabric over the LPAC stairwell. In 2004, a member of Tamagawa’s Art Program held a workshop in Japanese textile design for Swarthmore art students. In 2008, Isaburoh served as a Cornell Visiting Professor of Japanese at Swarthmore, during which his taiko classes performed with the Tamagawa group to an audience of over 20,000 people at Philadelphia’s Sakura Sunday Festival. Swarthmore has benefitted from the Tamagawa Taiko program in innumerable ways, including the gift of fourteen professional-class taiko drums arranged by Isaburoh.

Since that first, modest concert at Swarthmore in 2000, Tamagawa Taiko has gained acclaim performing in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, DC, and across the Northeast. Notably, the group now performs annually for Philadelphia’s famous Cherry Blossom Festival. Amidst their growing reputation, Tamagawa Taiko returns to Swarthmore yearly for their ever-popular performances and continues to grace the campus with their music, dance, and Japanese cultural education. Says Professor Arrow, “I am aware that audiences await each Cherry Blossom season with much anticipation for this world-class event with its exceptionally trained drummers and dancers. I am very grateful that they regard Swarthmore as their second home.”

Taiko students Christine Lee ‘18 and Josie Hung ‘18 also voice their gratitude having witnessed several Tamagawa Taiko performances. “This upcoming show will be my 3rd time seeing Tamagawa Taiko perform,” says Lee. “Each time I watch their show, I am blown away by their artistry, skills, and overall performance. The drums are exhilarating, the dances are mesmerizing, and the fact that they’re students our age is all the more impressive.” Hung remembers the performances with similar awe. “The experience was truly amazing. I loved the energy, movement, and preciseness that each player brought and was completely enveloped in their performance from the moment they hit their first beat.” Hung encourages everyone, especially students outside the Music and Dance Department, to attend a Tamagawa Taiko performance. “I think it is valuable to see professional performances from people who train everyday in this art form,” she says. “I also think engaging and learning from art in different cultures is a very important and valuable lesson that every individual can take from this.”

Maya Kikuchi ’20

Swarthmore Wind Ensemble’s Spring Concert

Having survived four March winter storms and a few power outages, the Swarthmore College Music and Dance Department is now ready to host its series of spring concerts, featuring students from a variety of classes and music and dance groups. One of these is the Wind Ensemble Concert, featuring over thirty members from the student body, faculty, and Swarthmore community.

Wind Ensemble is one of the largest music courses at Swarthmore, with over 30 members this semester. It is also one of the oldest, ongoing since the 1980s. Andrew Hauze, a Swarthmore professor trained as a conductor, pianist, and organist, has taught the class every semester for the past seven years.

“The biggest challenge from semester to semester is figuring out who is playing, what their level is, and finding music that everyone can play together,” says Hauze. “…I love that it brings students together from all across campus. I get to hear about what they’re doing in their courses, and meet students from all departments.”

The Wind Ensemble is open to students from all class years and majors who play wind, brass, or percussion instruments. As a Tri-Co class, the Ensemble often has at least a few students from Bryn Mawr and Haverford, in addition to faculty and members from the local community. As Hauze explains, “if we have room, we open the Ensemble to community members, especially those who play instruments we don’t have in that year’s ensemble. It’s really nice – [students and community members] really get to know each other and many of the faculty and community members keep coming year after year, for over a decade, so there’s this intergenerational dynamic.”

This semester’s Wind Ensemble features two faculty members, Gilbert Rose (Classics) on the trumpet and Carr Everbach (Engineering) on the trombone, in addition to four community members. The Ensemble features a variety of instruments and musicians, ranging from six clarinetists and flutists to a pianist, and one player of the less-known euphonium (a baritone horn). Regarding Wind Ensembles in general, Professor Hauze notes, “one of the strange things about Wind Ensembles as a group is that it only began to coalesce in the 20th century. So if we want to play older music it needs to be arrangements not originally intended for this group. I like to get a mix of pieces originally written for these instruments and pieces that have been arranged. The Ensemble always plays together, for every piece.”

Saturday’s concert will feature seven pieces, divided into two sections, mainly religious and spiritual works. To honor the centennial of the birth of Leonard Bernstein, one of the most famous American composers in musicalhistory, the Ensemble will perform his “Profanation,” a complex piece whose meter changes with almost every measure.

Hauze’s personal favorite in the first section is “O God Unseen,” by Philadelphia-born composer Vincent Persichetti. This will be Hauze’s first time conducting the piece.

“[Persichetti] was this very famous composer, with a lot of weight in the musical community. But at the same time he was interested in writing for ordinary people, so a lot of his wind music is in that vein,” explains Hauze. “But at the same time he is very serious, this is a brooding and haunting piece. The musical language is pretty complex, but playable by a college group. It’s been very challenging but super fun to learn!”

The second half of the concert will be more lighthearted, and focused on storytelling. Hauze is especially fond of the Overture of 1930s Broadway musical Of Thee I Sing, composed by George Gershwin. “The Gershwin one is very close to my heart, because I think he is really fantastic but not as well known today. It’s also an arrangement I made 5 years ago, and because it is an overture it has fragments of music from all over the show, but they were blended in a way that’s really ingenious,” says Hauze.

The Wind Ensemble Concert is held Saturday, April 14, at 8pm in Lang Concert Hall. Students and community members are all welcome to attend.

Emilie Hautemont ’20

Representing Radiohead at Ethnomusicology Conference

On Saturday, March 24, Swarthmore Professor of Music Lei Ouyang Bryant and recent alumnus Tommy Neale ’17 presented selections of their respective scholarship at the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology’s annual conference in College Park, Maryland. Neale’s conference presentation consisted of a condensed version of the senior comprehensive paper that he presented to the music faculty for evaluation last semester. The topic of his paper is a music theoretical, historical, and cultural analysis of “Paranoid Android,” the lead single from Radiohead’s third studio album, OK Computer.

After reading his paper and listening to his presentation, Professor Bryant realized that Tommy’s research would be a good candidate for a conference presentation. She said, “I was really impressed with his multi-faceted examination of Radiohead. In his paper, he rigorously investigates the band, their music, and the particular historical and cultural moment of the album. Tommy has a wonderfully analytical mind and is really engaging in both writing and public speaking.” But the process of preparing his comprehensive for a conference presentation has not been without its challenges. Neale was tasked with condensing his 36-page thesis into a 10-page document and 20-minute presentation, that still somehow preserves his original points. Out of necessity, his presentation eschewed some of the finer music theoretical details that were contained in his original thesis, and focused mainly on the relationship between instrumentation, timbre, and ethnomusicology.

Both the process of writing his comprehensive and the subject matter of “Paranoid Android” were extremely important to Neale. He calls the initial process of writing his comprehensive as “tremendously worth doing” but also “very difficult” saying, “doing comps changed me.” “Paranoid Android” was “very formative” for Neale as a young listener, and he acknowledges the tremendous influence Radiohead has had on his own songwriting process. The process of sustained scholarship on a single topic is certainly a Herculean task, especially when the topic of one’s scholarship is a piece of art that holds such personal significance. The subject matter of “Paranoid Android” particularly resonates with Neale, especially given his experiences at Swarthmore. He describes Swarthmore as a “hyper-anxious place,” and says that the only way he has been able to keep his anxiety under control is by “going totally low tech…keep(ing) the stimulation really low.” “Paranoid Android,” written in the early days of the Internet Age, provides for Neale a distillation of this fear of sensory overload. “The main point of Radiohead,” he says, “is sort of turning the soundscape of modernity on itself critically.” In a world that can often be hyper-stimulating, Radiohead has provided for Neale a blueprint for survival.

He cites “the allure of doing something totally sideways…something very, very non-classical” for his senior comprehensive as one of his reasons in selecting “Paranoid Android.” But he is also quick to mention that his primary motivation was his love of Radiohead: “I think the reason that I loved them before is the reason I did comps, is the reason I still love them now.” But when asked how this process of scholarship has informed his conception of the song, Neale wryly chuckles. “In the end,” he says, “the research gets so far away from why you loved the song in the first place.” He says he is taking six months off from even listening to “Paranoid Android” again, perhaps to give his brain time to rest.

Rachel Hottle ’18

Chinese Music Ensemble’s Spring Concert

On Sunday, April 8th at 3:00PM the Swarthmore College Chinese Music Ensemble will be showcasing its talents in Lang Concert Hall for their spring concert in a program shared with Gamelan Semara Santi. The Ensemble is co-directed by Professor Lei Ouyang Bryant and Wang Guowei, a world-renowned performer who comes down from New York to rehearse with the students.

The Chinese Music Ensemble will be playing five pieces, all personally arranged by Wang Guowei to suit each musician’s abilities while still creating a cohesive piece. Many are related to nature, including “Flower Drum Song,” “August Flowers in Bloom,” and “Colorful Clouds Chasing the Moon.” Another piece, “The Happy Farmer,” is quick and fast-paced, leading some members of the Ensemble to jokingly call it, “The Stressed Farmer.” To round out the repertoire, the Ensemble is bringing back “Three Folk Songs,” which, as the title indicates, is composed of three separate folk songs.

The Chinese Music Ensemble was established as an official performance ensemble for the first time last semester, drawing both seasoned musicians and beginners looking to learn something new. Students will play traditional Chinese instruments such as the guzheng (zither), erhu (bowed fiddle), hulusi (gourd flute), and yangqin (hammered dulcimer). Though many students used their knowledge of Western instruments – for example, the hulusi is similar to the clarient – they had to adjust to various changes such as the use of cipher notation, which assigns a number to each note rather than a letter.

After a successful fall concert, the Ensemble drew more new members, with only four returners, turning last semester’s beginners into teachers for their peers. Lesia Liao ‘18, who started playing the yangqin just last semester, will now be playing a solo in “The Happy Farmer.”

The performances of Gamelan and the Chinese Music Ensemble will transport audiences across the world to China and Indonesia. As the Chinese Music Ensemble continues introducing students to traditional Chinese music, their spring concert’s ambitious repertoire will enrapture audiences with their energy and rich, melodic sound.

Tiffany Wang ’21

Gamelan Semara Santi Plays Lang Concert Hall and Hawthorne Park

To commemorate Gamelan Semara Santi’s twentieth anniversary season, the ensemble, comprised of Swarthmore students, faculty, staff, and community members, will perform two concerts. One in Lang Concert Hall on Sunday, April 8th, and the other on April 15th in South Philadelphia’s Hawthorne Park, the performances will feature Balinese music and dance performed in a variety of styles.

The second concert joins other activities designed to celebrate Gamelan’s twentieth anniversary through explorations of Balinese and other Asian styles of music. Earlier in the semester, the Department of Music and Dance hosted Indonesian dancer Didik Nini Thowok, who held a guest lecture and demonstration on cross-gender traditions in Balinese and other dance styles. The first performance will be shared with the newer Chinese Music Ensemble.

The decision to hold a second concert in Hawthorne Park is significant. According to co-director and Professor Thomas Whitman, there was “virtually no Indonesian community in Philadelphia” in 1997, when he began teaching gamelan at Swarthmore. He continues, “In the wake of Indonesian political and economic instability in the late 1990’s, however, there was large influx of immigrants from Indonesia, many of whom settled in South Philadelphia.” Following contacts made with the new community and the support of the College, transporting the group to the city became more of a possibility. “Swarthmore’s full ensemble has never performed for an audience of Indonesian-Americans…so we thought this would be an appropriate capstone for our 20th anniversary season.”

Hawthorne Park joins previous off-campus venues that the ensemble has performed at such as the Kimmel Center and Longwood Gardens. The instruments, created by I Wayan Beratha, arrived on campus in the fall of 1997 and have since been featured in biannual concerts at Swarthmore College. Gamelan Semara Santi’s name was derived as a tribute to Swarthmore College’s Quaker roots, merging the name of the Balinese god of love (Semar), and “santi,” the Sanskrit word for “peace.”

The collection of instruments is tuned in the pelog system, which is realized as a repeating sequence of five notes named for the Balinese vowel sounds. Among the instruments, the largest is the gong; in gamelan music, the gong occupies a central role and, with the kempur and kemong, defines the cyclical pattern through which the nuclear melody takes shape. This melody, contrary to much of traditional West European musical practice, is voiced through the lower-toned instruments jegogan and calung and enhanced by a number of gangsas. Accompanying this basic distribution of instruments are, depending on the style, the kajar, reyong, suling, kendang, ceng-ceng, and gentorag.

During its upcoming concerts, Gamelan Semara Santi will perform one piece from the Gamelan Semar Pegulingan repertoire, which rose in prominence during the nineteenth century and is characterized by a slower and more regular gong cycle. We will also perform two pieces of the rapid and dynamic Gong Kebyar style, which evolved in tangent with Bali’s rapid sociocultural and political changes around the turn of the twentieth century.

I am incredibly grateful to the directors and group for making Gamelan a central part of my Swarthmore education since freshman year and am honored to be able to participate in our twentieth anniversary concerts. I am excited to share what we have learned in both the Lang Concert Hall and Hawthorne Park!

Jacob Demree ‘19

Janis Siegel Performs with Swarthmore Jazz Ensemble

Janis Siegel, a Featured Guest Artist at Swarthmore College this year, has performed and hosted multiple workshops with voice students on campus throughout the academic year. Known for her Grammy award-winning work with the vocal group The Manhattan Transfer, Siegel is a big name in the music world, and music students at Swarthmore have been eager for opportunities to work with her. She has collaborated with solo performers and ensembles alike on campus, including a workshop held with Swarthmore’s Garnet Singers.

Shelby Billups ‘20, voice student and member of the Swarthmore Garnet Singers, has worked with Siegel as both a soloist and ensemble member. On the experiences, she says, “With Ms. Siegel, you never know what to expect and I think that’s what added to the excitement of being in a class with her. You have a chance to spontaneously explore different styles of your voice.” Josie Ross ‘21, another Garnet Singers member and solo workshop participant, speaks of the ease of working with Siegel. “Siegel has a warm, welcoming presence that makes you comfortable to step outside of your comfort zone. When I was invited to the workshop, I was nervous to sing to such a experienced performer. However, her collaborative style gave me the courage to try singing techniques in front of a group of strangers.”

Not only voice students will benefit from Siegel’s presence and mentorship on campus. This semester, the Swarthmore College Jazz Ensemble will perform its first ever concert with a guest artist or vocalist, and aiding the ensemble in this debut is none other than Janis Siegel. Members of the ensemble are honored to take part in this Jazz Ensemble first, and trombonist Sam Gardner ‘19 voices their excitement. “Janis Siegel is a total professional,” he says. “It should be a fun and different show.” Siegel will perform with the Jazz Ensemble in seven out of eleven concert pieces. The repertoire includes several Duke Ellington works and a brand new version of “Genie in a Bottle” by Christina Aguilera, arranged by Janis Siegel and ensemble conductor Andrew Neu.

Swarthmore Jazz Ensemble is a standard jazz big band comprised of five saxes, four trombones, four trumpets, piano, bass, and drums. The group has rehearsed three hours per week throughout the semester in preparation for this performance. Says Andrew Neu, “Not only do we have such a superstar guest artist with us, but the Swarthmore Jazz Ensemble is a talented group of musicians in their own right. Every one of their past performances has been an exciting night of dynamic jazz, and the word is spreading about how great they are. If you haven’t seen the band, then you need to find out what everyone has been talking about!”

The Swarthmore Jazz Ensemble Concert with Janis Siegel will be held Saturday, April 7th at 8PM in Lang Concert Hall. This event is free and open to the public. For more information, visit https://www.swarthmore.edu/music/concerts-events.

Maya Kikuchi ’20

Deborah Wong: “Women of Color Creating Change: Taiko, FandangObon, and Asian American Arts Activism”

Fitting with this month’s celebration of Women’s History, Professor Deborah Wong from the University of California, Riverside will deliver the 2018 Genevieve Lee ’96 Memorial Lecture with a presentation on the way Asian American women use the arts to promote social change. The Lee Lecture is an annual endowed lecture that supports the development of multi-disciplinary Asian American studies. This year’s lecture is sponsored through the Asian Studies Program and Department of Music and Dance at Swarthmore College. Titled “Women of Color Creating Change: Taiko, FandangObon, and Asian American Arts Activism,” Professor Wong’s lecture will explore two case studies of the arts as a form of social change. The first case study looks at taiko and the role of gender within the taiko community among a diverse group of women. The second examines FandangObon, a festival based in L.A. that brings together Japanese, Mexican, and African American communities for a celebration of dance, music and environmental consciousness.

As a Professor of Music and an ethnomusicologist who specializes in Asian American and Thai music, Professor Deborah Wong has defined her academic career by working with diverse groups of people in order to seek out and promote interethnic collaborations. ‘Inter’ and ‘diversity’ are key words to Professor Wong’s research and are reflected in the works she has published. Speak it Louder: Asian Americans Making Music for example, a book that Professor Wong published in 2004, tracks the multitude of musical genres Asian Americans have contributed to. From traditional Asian, to jazz, pop, and classical, her work looks at how Asian Americans have created and participated in a diverse array of music traditions.

Lesia Liao ’18 read Speak It Louder to learn more about the field of ethnomusicology for an independent research project with Professor Lei Ouyang Bryant of the Swarthmore Department of Music & Dance. Liao has been working to create an annotated bibliography for Asian Americans involved in music to investigate what Asian American music is and how we might define it. Liao notes that “ethnomusicology…is especially interesting because it takes music as a site of identity formation and one[‘]s grappling with experiences.”

Professor Wong’s lecture will discuss just how to address that relationship between music and identity formation, particularly among Asian American women. Liao voiced her excitement for learning how Professor Wong balances community engagement with ethnographic research, and related the relevance and importance of this lecture, stating that “this talk will be relevant and engaging with people of color, activists who seek different ways to engage in the movement such as through the arts, Asian Americans, and anyone with an interest in the Asian-American experience, anthropology, or music.”

Among her many accomplishments, Professor Wong has also served as the President of the Society for Ethnomusicology, an editor for Wesleyan University Press’s Music/Culture series, a research member for the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation, Chair of the Advisory Council for the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, and a project manager for the Great Leap Online Archive.

Professor Lei Ouyang Bryant has long been impressed with Professor Wong’s involvement in ethnomusicology and the public sector, and has been the one to suggest bringing Professor Wong to campus as the Genevieve Lee ’96 lecturer:

“I have had the great pleasure of getting to know her through our shared interest in Taiko communities and her leadership for the Society for Ethnomusicology. I believe that Professor Wong’s commitment to Asian American communities and public sector work are both important connections to the interests of students at Swarthmore.”

As an activist, academic, and ethnomusicologist, Professor Wong’s lecture will prove to be an engaging and insightful discussion on Asian American women’s involvement in the arts and social activism.

This event is free and open to the public. The lecture will take place on Monday, April 2 at 4:30 PM in the Scheuer Room in Kohlberg.

Marion Kudla ’19

The Tempest Brews at Swarthmore College

Emily Kennedy, a junior from Portland, Oregon, wasn’t planning on being a stage manager this semester. She had already stage managed three shows at Swarthmore thus far, and as a Political Science Major with Environmental Studies and Math minors who is also pre-med and going abroad next semester, she had plenty of reason to take a break this spring and focus on academics and other extracurricular pursuits.

But when senior honors Theater major Wesley Han asked her to run their upcoming production of The Tempest, she found herself unable to turn down the “crazy” opportunity. Kennedy knew Han from previous plays, in which at least one of them was acting, and had also seen their work as the director of last fall’s Senior Company production of HIR. She describes Han as “such an incredible artist” and the chance to work with them as a stage-manager/director team on a show this ambitious she felt was not one to be missed.

A major part of what sets Han’s Tempest apart from Swarthmore’s usual theater offerings is that dance and music play an integral role throughout. This makes sense considering their background as a cellist and pianist, whose drama experience during high school consisted almost exclusively of acting, singing, and dancing in musicals. It’s true that here at Swarthmore, Han “got used to doing straight theater” and even learned to appreciate “how much more room for substance there is when you’re not stopping every five minutes to spontaneously burst into song.” But after a very substantial and emotionally charged directing capstone last semester in the form of HIR, which involved just four actors and explored family politics with a queer twist, Han is returning to a much more dance- and sound-oriented production this spring with The Tempest.

The whole idea of doing this show originated in large part in the desire to incorporate dance into Han’s theater work, and Shakespeare provided a natural starting point. “So much of [a Shakespeare story] needs to be told nonverbally,” Han says, since “a lot of the language isn’t accessible today.” And when dance minor Jenny Gao ’18 planted the seed of potentially collaborating, they immediately thought that her background and movement style would make her a good fit for the role of Ariel in The Tempest; in this production, Ariel isn’t just “some dude in a costume covered in feathers who just moves around like a person,” but rather a fully embodied spirit, with a cadre of lesser spirits to do her bidding.

In charge of choreographing most of the movement for that spirit ensemble is Louisa Carman ’21. Carman, a prospective Political Science major with minors in Spanish and Dance, brings to this project a wealth of dance experience applied in new ways. In high school, she studied ballet, jazz, tap, and hip-hop, and performed with Chicago’s Evanston Dance Ensemble in several of their large story-based productions, such as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Alice in Wonderland. Through Evanston, she also gained some experience creating her own work, but hadn’t yet combined the two skills—choreographing and storytelling—in a deliberate way until The Tempest. This combination proved initially difficult, as Carman says “it was a challenge for me to choreograph with the mindset that every element…has a role in advancing the story and adding to the overall atmosphere of the scene.” She has had throughout the process to balance the worth of her movement for its own sake with how well it contributes to the overall theatrical production.

Sound designer Oliver Lipton ’18 has found himself adjusting to that balance, as well. Lipton composed most of the show’s soundtrack as an honors thesis for his major in Theater, and while he had previously produced a radioplay called What We Fear as an independent study, this is his first experience creating sound for live theater or dance. There’s a lot to explore, as not only is he providing the precise cues referred to or suggested by the script, but also the more extensive and rhythmically structured music for dance. Since Ariel in this production doesn’t speak onstage, he’s also responsible for manipulating recordings of Ariel’s voice to stand in for live lines. All of these have to fit into a coherent soundscape that suggests the particular atmosphere and dynamics of one island, which Lipton decided was a mix of electronic and acoustic sound (dancer Gabriela Brown and Han play flute and cello, respectively, in several of his compositions). He says that within that general auditory framework, “designing sounds in such a way that they work for the rest of the elements at play has been very interesting.”

Despite the challenges and compromises inherent in crafting all the factors involved in a production of this scope into a harmonious whole, having so many minds in the mix is ultimately quite rewarding. Carman, for one, says her favorite part of choreographing for the show has been “working with other creative people,” and that she has “learned so much about the decisions that happen behind the scenes for a production like this one.” Stage manager Kennedy, who gets to follow the whole arc of the project from before auditions to closing night, definitely agrees. She loves facilitating and watching as “a bunch of people come together to make something cool.” And The Tempest is shaping up to be something cool, indeed.

The Tempest will be showing in the LPAC Frear Ensemble Theater Friday, March 30th at 8pm, Saturday, March 31st at 2pm and 8pm, and Sunday, April 1st at 2pm.

Lydia Roe ’20