University Arts Take Center Stage

When Madelyn M. Ho ’08 arrived at Harvard, she had a clear plan: concentrate in the sciences, prepare for medical school, and, in her free time, continue dancing ballet as a hobby. Four years later, the chemical and physical biology concentrator is set to join a six-member professional dance company founded by renowned choreographer Paul Taylor.

Ho’s transition from potential doctor to decided dancer wouldn’t have happened just a few years ago. After performing the “Parsons Etude” in the 2006 Loeb Mainstage production “American Grace,” Ho decided to further explore the dance repertoires of David Parsons and Taylor. An Artist Development Fellowship, offered for the first time last year by the Office for the Arts (OFA) and Office of Career Services, allowed her to do so through open dance classes and two dance intensives in New York. This spring, Ho continued studying both the theory and the practice of Taylor’s dance in a new dramatic arts class taught by Ruth Andrien, a former principal dancer for Taylor.

Despite pursuing ballet in high school and never considering dance until this year, Ho will now tour the nation with a professional company created by one of its foremost modern choreographers. Her shift is emblematic of a campus whose already-vibrant arts community is gaining prominence and support, and is finding new ways to integrate reflection and creation.

Less than a month into her tenure as University President, Drew G. Faust crystallized these changes by announcing the creation of a new task force on the arts, on which Ho has served. Though Faust’s commitment to the arts has largely been expressed through rhetoric and small but symbolic actions, she has generated palpable enthusiasm as the arts community begins to rethink and reshape its role at Harvard.

NOT JUST THEORY

While Faust’s arrival was accompanied by buzz claiming she would be Harvard’s first artistic president, the campus she took over already supported a flourishing arts community in which several important developments were underway. Harvard annually hosts some 450 musical performances and 40 to 55 theatrical productions, and between 2700 and 3000 undergraduates participated in Harvard’s art-making opportunities last year, according to OFA director Jack Megan.

Though Harvard has historically privileged critical reflection on the arts over practical creation of the arts, it has nonetheless managed to develop a strong extracurricular-based community that has contributed to the growth of artists such as John A. Lithgow ’67 and Yo-Yo Ma ’76.

“It’s a place where people are drawn together by passion as opposed to academic demands or by being forced to do things,” Kara E. Kaufman ’08—the former president of the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club (HRDC)­—said. “It’s all very student-driven.” Indeed, many alumni say they received a better theater education at Harvard than they would have with a theater major, according to Robert Scanlan, who chairs the Committee on Dramatic Arts.

“You have diverse, gifted musicians here who collaborate all the time,” said Bong-Ihn Koh ’08, a cellist enrolled in a joint degree program with Harvard and the New England Conservatory (NEC). Saxophonist Alex J. Rezzo, another participant in the program, agreed. “What I really like about the Harvard side of the [Harvard-NEC] program is it seems like the musicians are creating their own opportunities to play.”

Still, the extracurricular orientation of Harvard’s arts communities has been a topic of much discussion and debate, with some seeking to preserve the culture that exists and others seeking greater institutional support.

“I think the opportunities here are absolutely amazing in some respects and limited in other ways,” HRDC president Allison B. Kline ’09 said. While she said she appreciates the experience she’s gained by being thrown into administration, production, and design duties, Kline said she would prefer more aid from the University in gradually acquiring those skills.

Although the self-motivated nature of drama at Harvard originally pushed Daniel R. Pecci ’09 to choose it over Yale, he said he now wishes he had more advice from professionals. “If you don’t have the practical, it’s just theory and you’re not improving the craft,” Pecci said. Pecci, who wrote a play that opened in Berlin this past winter and serves on Faust’s task force, said he hopes to see the University move toward a dramatic arts concentration. “I think it’s necessary if Harvard wants to produce the intellectual artists—that I so admire—that have done it despite all that’s been against them,” he says.

Harvard took the first steps toward such a concentration this fall when it unveiled new secondary fields in both music and dramatic arts, which includes theater and dance. In addition to basic courses in acting, directing, and choreography, this year’s dramatic arts offerings included the Paul Taylor dance class, a course on the Practical Aesthetics acting technique, and an introduction to stage combat.

As Koh points out, Harvard’s music department still emphasizes theory and ethnomusicology over performance. But while Koh wishes Harvard would utilize its NEC link to give more students the opportunity to take practical music courses, Rezzo supports the University’s current approach to the arts. “It’s a broad liberal-arts education, and that’s why I came here, at least,” he said.

A NEW STAGE

Despite the size and vibrancy of Harvard’s arts community, some students express a sense of separation from the rest of campus. “Unfortunately for the larger community, there seems to be some sort of barrier between the two,” Pecci said. “It seems as if the Harvard community at large isn’t aware of a lot of the work going on and how good a lot of it is.”

Kaufman noted that the Loeb Mainstage, which seats over 500, has drawn audiences of 20 or less but was filled on the closing night of this spring’s “Sweeney Todd.”

“I think it’s great that so many people were excited about ‘Sweeney Todd,’” Kline said. “It’s also kind of sad that that was the first time I’ve seen that theater so full and it wasn’t the first time I’ve seen work of that quality.”

“To some extent, the problem is always going to be people being busy,” Kaufman said. “But I think the more outlets we have and the more places our work is being seen, the more people will start to think of theatre when they think of things to do on a random Friday night.”

The New College Theatre, which took the place of the old Hasty Pudding Theatre on Holyoke Street this October, provides one such outlet. The 272-seat theatre features state-of-the-art lighting, a mechanized orchestra pit, and a rehearsal and performance space as large as its main stage. Its location, Faust observed in remarks at the Theatre’s opening, “literally and figuratively made arts more central at the University.”

THE CHARGE

Making arts more central at Harvard has been one of the defining themes of Faust’s brief tenure as president. As Megan put it, she has attempted to support the community in “small but substantive ways,” such as setting up a student art exhibit in Mass. Hall or simply attending several undergraduate productions.

Most significantly, Faust inaugurated the first comprehensive study of the arts at Harvard in over 50 years. “Our extraordinary strengths in the arts remain fragmented, less well-understood, less well-supported, and less integrated than their importance warrants,” she wrote in her charge to the task force, which is expected to issue a report in the fall.

Megan, who serves on the task force, said that it has taken “a leave-no-stone-unturned approach to where we are,” meeting with everyone from students to museum staffers to faculty from key academic departments. In addition, the task force has studied the arts at other universities such as Yale and Princeton.

“I expected when I went out to feel embarrassed for Harvard in terms of what it does in the arts, for the arts, versus what other institutions do,” Megan said. “What I felt, in fact, was enormous pride with what our students do, but an enormous gap with what Harvard can do to support them.”

Though large, concrete changes have yet to occur, Faust’s emphasis on the arts has reverberated throughout the community. “We’ve been explicitly encouraged to think, and to think open-endedly and ambitiously,” Scanlan said. “It will unmistakably lead to something.”

FROM HOPES TO DEFINITIONS

Though the task force’s recommendations remain an open question, last month’s $30 million donation for the arts from David Rockefeller ’36 should help implement the answer. Thomas Lee, the program manager of the OFA’s “Learning from Performers” series, looks toward new housing and work space in Allston in order to support longer residencies from practicing artists. Citing the positive impact of the Harvard Dance Center that opened in 2005, Ho expressed a desire for more space and facilities, as well as a stronger arts community that cuts across fields. Megan hopes to see more visible evidence of art-making on campus and a deeper connection to the curriculum.

For now, however, the discussion continues. “My guess is that many of us have been thinking about this from the very day we touched down in Cambridge, but now we’re beginning to think about it in a very different, very tangible way,” Megan said. “This process has forced us to give definition to what before were only hopes.”

—Staff writer Patrick R. Chesnut can be reached at pchesnut@fas.harvard.edu.