Read the full story at Hopkins Center news.
When the students of the Dartmouth Dance Theater Ensemble premiered their original work Undue Influence in May 2011, they wondered—worried, even—how their peers, and the college as a whole, would react to this frank account of sexual assault in the college social environment.
A reprise performance of Undue Influence will take place Wednesday through Saturday, April 25 through 28, at 8 p.m., and Sunday, April 29, at 2 p.m., in the Hopkins Center’s Moore Theater. (photo by Rob Strong)
As it turned out, the show sparked just the sort of recognition and dialogue the students and their faculty directors hoped for—so much so, that the Office of the President, in partnership with the college’s Sexual Assault Awareness Program (SAAP), is co-sponsoring a reprise of the show this spring. This will take place Wednesday through Saturday, April 25 through 28, at 8 p.m., and Sunday, April 29, at 2 p.m., in the Moore Theater of the Hopkins Center. The culminating performance event for Sexual Assault Awareness Month, the reprise is co-sponsored by the Dartmouth Centers Forum and the Leslie Center for the Humanities.
“We think it’s very important and very powerful to have this issue openly discussed on campus,” said David Spalding, chief of staff for Dartmouth President Jim Yong Kim. Last year’s show drew a large, diverse audience from across campus, students as well as faculty and staff, and sparked valuable exchanges both in the talk-back sessions after the shows and across campus in the weeks following it, Spalding said.
Wrote SAAP Coordinator Rebekah Carrow in a statement about the reprise, “Undue Influence provides the Dartmouth campus an opportunity to examine the issue of sexual violence in a powerful display of dance and theatre. The piece brings timely dialogue out of committees and training sessions into a visceral experience of high-energy, charged theater, danced with the immediacy and relevance of peer group understanding.”
Program contains adult language and themes.
