Construction on the Hopkins Center for the Arts began its final phase this winter. The building—which as of mid-December is now fully enclosed—is on track to officially reopen in the fall as a reimagined and expanded hub for welcoming, gathering, and creation of all kinds. 

When it opens, the revitalized Hop will serve as the primary gateway to Dartmouth’s Arts District, which includes the Hood Museum of Art, the Black Family Visual Arts Center, Maffei Plaza, and The Warehouse sonic arts lab at 4 Currier Place. 

The performance lab: ‘Where creation happens’

A centerpiece of the new Hop will be its state-of-the-art performance lab—a one-of-a-kind, fully adaptable, technologically advanced space capable of supporting any artistic vision faculty, student, and visiting creators can imagine.

The performance lab is “where creation happens,” says Mary Lou Aleskie, the Howard Gilman ’44 Executive Director of the Hop. “The space is so fully adaptable that it lends itself toward animating the richest innovations possible. There’s no space like it in the Upper Valley, and certainly no space like it on our campus.”

Built in the footprint of the former Alumni Hall, the performance lab will have retractable seating, allowing for an array of audience arrangements, and one of the Hop’s four sprung floors, suitable for professional-caliber dance and acrobatics. (The other sprung floors will be in the new dance studio, the recital hall, and the theater rehearsal room.)

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The performance lab will have retractable seating and be highly adaptable for different events. It will also be the technical nerve center of the entire Hop, controlling the LED lighting that will charge the atmosphere of the building throughout the day and into the evening. (Courtesy of Snøhetta & Tegmark) 

The lab will be adaptable “to any kind of configuration, any kind of performance installation, anything technologically equipped, anything digitally equipped that we had ever hoped for—from performative installations to dance parties, jazz club environments, fashion shows, or any event format that is not anchored in people sitting in seats looking up at a stage,” Aleskie says.

It will also be the technical nerve center of the entire Hop, Aleskie says, controlling the LED lighting that will charge the atmosphere of the building throughout the day and into the evening. 

“During the day, the building has a character that’s buzzy and bright. And as twilight comes up, it starts to take on a different temperature,” Aleskie says. “It becomes luminescent, and it calls to the community and says, ‘This is the place to be.’” 

World-class spaces for music, theater, and more 

As envisioned by the internationally renowned design firm Snøhetta, the new Hop will also boast the world-class Jack 1953 and Mac 2011 Morris Recital Hall, equipped with specialty drapes that allow for controlled acoustical levels and resonances for more intimate performances and rehearsals. Aleskie calls it “the most perfect recital hall in New England, and maybe just about anywhere.”

Renovated spaces include refurbished and acoustically optimized performance and rehearsal spaces for music and theater, student workshops, accessible backstage areas that Aleskie says will be “an exciting hangout for a lot of students,” and a completely reconfigured Top of the Hop.

The familiar arched vaulted roof and brick exterior of the original Hop is being complemented by the 15,000-square-foot Daryl and Steven Roth Wing (named in honor of the $25 million lead gift from Daryl and Steve Roth ’62, Tuck ’63), clad with elegantly curved concrete panels on the south side and, on the north side facing the Green, with the similarly curving copper-toned steel mullions and glass panels of the two-story recital hall.

“Those 6,000-pound pieces of glass were shipped from Germany and meticulously installed one by one with three teams, one calling the commands, one guiding, and the last one holding it with suction cups” as each piece was secured, says Aleskie, whose office in Wilson Hall has given her a prime view of the construction process.

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The Jack 1953 and Mac 2011 Morris Recital Hall, shown under construction in October, will have world-class acoustics and views across the Green. (Photo by Matt Driscoll, CSL Consulting)

“From the recital hall, we can look out across the Green and see Baker Tower, which was the inspiration for the shape of the glass panels and mullions that frame the tower. So when you sit in this room, you not only get to hear wonderful music, but you get to be inspired by the things we love most at Dartmouth.”

The recital hall sits atop Dartmouth’s first-ever professional-caliber dance studio, which is also two stories—high enough to “accommodate any leap that any dancer can make,” says Aleskie, who traces the tradition of dance excellence at Dartmouth to the founding of the modern dance troupe Pilobolus at the Hop in the early 1970s. Clerestory windows allow street-level visitors a glimpse into the studio while preserving rehearsing dancers’ privacy. 

Accessible, welcoming, energy-efficient

A landscaped, accessible plaza opens from East Wheelock Street into the Roth Wing forum—now the Hop’s primary entrance, with a broad central staircase leading up to faculty offices, the recital hall, the performance lab, and a new public lounge overlooking the Green, adjacent to the Top of the Hop. These stairs replace the staircase that formerly led from the Moore Theater lobby to the Top of the Hop, allowing the Top of the Hop to be a more discrete, flexible space for studying, gathering, and events, complete with its own café/bar.

“One of the most fundamental changes to the Hop is that the new building is just going to be much more welcoming, intuitive, and accessible,” says Josh Keniston, senior vice president of capital planning and campus operations.

In addition, Keniston says the Hop’s design emphasizes energy efficiency. The project is well-aligned with the Dartmouth Climate Collaborative, a $500 million initiative that has set the goal of eliminating campus carbon emissions by 2050.

“Even though we’re expanding the building, we’re reducing our overall energy usage by 25% by adding insulation, being thoughtful about how we’re building, and using more efficient systems to heat and cool the building,” Keniston says.

A look ahead

Core construction—including electrical and other HVAC systems and drywall installation—will be complete by mid-May, Keniston says. Then, throughout the late spring and summer, technical teams will install and test the building’s specialty equipment, digital lighting systems, and acoustics.

“It’s very exciting, because we’ll be at the cutting edge of the technology, and our crews need to train on how to use all of it,” Aleskie says.

In September, the space will be ready to welcome faculty and students, and a public opening and dedication will be celebrated in the fall. 

The Hop is expected to host student and faculty performances throughout the fall term, and visiting artists will return to its stages and workshops beginning in winter 2026. 

The original Hop opened in 1962 and was designed by Wallace Harrison, who went on to incorporate many of its architectural elements into the design of the Metropolitan Opera House at New York City’s Lincoln Center, which opened four years later. Snøhetta’s expansion and renewal, which began in winter 2023, honors Harrison’s original vision for the Hop while fully updating the building for the needs of the future.