Musical activities
As of 2004, student musical groups include the Barbary Coast Jazz Ensemble,
the Dartmouth Glee Club, the Dartmouth Chamber Singers, the
Dartmouth Aires, the Dartmouth Cords, the Dartmouth Dodecaphonics, the Dartmouth Gospel Choir, the Handel Society of
Dartmouth College, the Dartmouth College Marching Band, the Dartmouth Rockapellas, the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra, the
Dartmouth Wind Symphony, and the World Music Percussion Ensemble.The Dartmouth Wind Symphony is comprised mostly of non-music majors. In addition to performing on campus, each winter it
presents a joint concert another college or university's wind ensemble, such as Yale University, MIT, McGill
University, and the New England Conservatory.
Originally formed as the
Injunaires in 1946 as a offshoot of the college Glee
Club, the Aires broke with the Glee Club in the late 1970s.Although the Aires usually have about sixteen members, group numbers vary on a term-to-term basis. Auditions are held at the
beginning of every fall term. Members of the Aires pick what songs to arrange based on the group's tastes. Because the Aires are
such a diverse group of people, they end up singing a lot of different styles. Currently, much of the repertoire consists of
popular songs from the 1980s and 90s, but it also
includes many traditional Dartmouth songs, a few 1950s and 1960s tunes, selected Hip Hop tracks, and the occasional musical theater piece.Most of the arrangements consist of a soloist, a dozen or so people singing background, and a vocal percussionist. The
background of arrangements consists of a series of complex "instrument-like" syllables that, when sung together, resemble the
background of the original song.The Aires perform an average of once or twice a week at Dartmouth. They frequently take weekend road-trips, singing at other
colleges, high schools, and Dartmouth alumni clubs. Every winter break, the Aires tour the Eastern Seaboard, while travelling
further afield every spring. Recent spring tours have taken them to the ski resort town of Vail, a few of the Hawaiian Islands, and much of
Southern California.Recent Aires accolades include selection for
Varsity Vocals' 
Best Of Collegiate
Acappella compilation CD in both 2003 and
2005, as well as winning the
Contemporary Acappella Recording Award (CARA) for Best All-Male Collegiate Album of 2003. The CARAs are
awarded yearly by the
Contemporary Acappella Society
of America (CASA) .
The
Dartmouth
Cords are an all-male singing group which was
founded in 1996 and have usually consisted of around 15 members. The Cords are known for
wearing corduroy pants to every performance. Their eclectic repertoire has always included pop, rock, hip-hop, and
Dartmouth songs. Voice parts include tenors, baritones, basses
and vocal percussionists. The group incorporates choreography, comedic skits and visual media to enhance their shows.Auditions for the group are held at the beginning of every fall term. Every Winter term, the Cords go on a Winter Tour
traveling to sing at colleges and venues throughout the country. Every Spring term, the group holds a Sing-Out, where Cord alumni
from past years come back to Dartmouth to sing Cords’ songs old and new.The Cords’ latest CD,
Elements of Style 2002 has won awards from the
national collegiate A Cappella organizations CASA and Varsity Vocals. Their other recordings
include
Against the Grain 1999 and
Accordingly 1997.
The
Dartmouth Dodecaphonics (
Dodecs) is an a cappella created in 1984. They sing mainly contemporary pop music,
with arrangements by such artists and groups as The Calling, Maroon 5, Guster, Evanescence, and Alanis Morissette. They also sing doo-wop favorites,
'80s songs, traditionals,
Dartmouth songs, and sometimes disco. Dodex was the first Dartmouth group to be
recognized on Boca, a compilation a cappella CD,
with their rendition of the Smashing Pumpkins' "Drown." As of 2004, they are working on their fifth album.
The
Dartmouth
Rockapellas (often called "The Rocks") is
one of three all-female a cappella groups on the campus. They were founded on
February 7th, 1989 with a musical and
also a political purpose: to spread social awareness by performing "freedom songs."The Rockapellas has typically consisted of around 16 members from diverse backgrounds. Their repertoire of over 100 songs
includes hip-hop, country and pop. They have toured the United States, the Bahamas
and Hawaii, competed in the International Championship of Collegiate Acappella
ICCA tournament, and have been featured on
Varsity Vocals' Best Of
Collegiate Acappella CD.The Rockapellas' recordings include
BARE 2003,
Velvet Rocks 1999,
Think On These Things 1996, and
Off the
Track 1994 and,
Definitions 1992.
Consisting mostly of non-music majors, the
Dartmouth Wind
Symphony (DWS) performs three
official concerts a year, one each academic term (except for summer), at the college's performing arts center.The DWS also plays joint concerts each winter term with another college or university's wind ensemble. Past exchanges have
taken place with Yale, MIT, McGill, and the New England
Conservatory. On these exchanges, the DWS plays one half of the concert while the visiting school plays the other. The DWS
also visits the other school and plays half the concert there.The DWS has hosted many special guests for its concerts, including the New York Philharmonic's Phil Smith, and the long-running star of Broadway's Phantom of the Opera, Ted Keegan. These guests usually play a few
selections with the Wind Symphony as well as solo pieces on their own.
Formed during the 1890s, the Marching Band is a "scatter band" like every Ivy League Marching Band but Cornell's. For each
game the band writes a halftime show that is read over the loudspeaker as the band scrambles into formation and then plays a song
related to the show. Past formations have included a pair of bagels, Carl Sagan's telescope, a Hanover Police car, a bacterium,
and an amoeba.The band continues to play the old fight songs that have been played at football games for nearly a century. These songs
include "Dartmouth's in Town Again," "Come Stand Up Then," "As the Backs Go Tearing By," and "Glory to Dartmouth." The conclusion
of each game is cause to play Dartmouth's Alma Mater, to which audience members sing.The band boasts many skilled musicians, even some music majors, but it also includes a kazoo section as well as a "liquid
percussion" section, in which kegs and jugs are used as percussion instruments.Every Dartmouth Night Weekend the band doubles in size as alumni come back, wearing sweaters knitted by the Faculty Advisor's
wife, and march with the band. Some alumni have come back for more than 50 homecomings.The uniform consist of white pants and a green blazer for football games and green-and-white striped rugby shirts for
basketball and hockey games. Band performances at the latter two sports permit regrettably little opportunity for actual
marching.The band's goofy nature and non-traditional attire sets it apart from the other Ivy League Marching Bands.
Dartmouth College Marching
Band The Harlequins is the only student-run musical production organization at
Dartmouth College. It was
founded in 1995 and produces musicals. Its first production was Godspell, a musical about the new testament written by Stephen Schwartz, performed in Dartmouth Hall in 1995. Other productions have included
Guys and Dolls,
A Funny Thing
Happened on the Way to the Forum(2001) by Stephen Sondheim,
Taxi-Cabaret(2002),
Jesus Christ Superstar,
Love, Sex and
Everything in Between(a revue done in fall,2002),
A Chorus
Line(2003),
Little Shop of Horrors(2003)
by Alan Menken,
That's Entertainment(a revue done in fall, 2003),
The Last Five Years (By Jason Robert Brown) (2004),
Pippin(2004)(By Stephen Schwartz),
You're A Good Man, Charlie
Brown(2004) and the first summer show
A Summer Revue produced in 2004. The Summer Revue consisted of 18 musical
numbers from musicals as diverse as Adam Guettel's
Myths and Hymns, Cy Coleman's
City of
Angels, Andrew Lloyd Webber's
Sunset Boulevard, and Jason Robert Brown's
Songs For a
New World. As of 2004, the group consists of over 300 student singers,
intrumentalists, production staff-members and officers, and hopes to put on additional shows at Dartmouth each term in the coming
year.
Winter Carnival is, as of 2004, a 94-year-old tradition at
Dartmouth College and was particularly famous during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.The Dartmouth
Outing Club, founded in 1909, organized a winter weekend "field day" in 1910. This was an athletic event centered on skiing, a sport which the Outing Club helped to
pioneer and publicize on a national scale. In 1911 the event was named Winter Carnival,
social events were added, and women were invited to attend. By 1919 the emphasis had
shifted to dances organized by fraternities. Special trains made runs to transport women guests to Dartmouth, and National
Geographic Magazine referred to it as "the Mardi Gras of the North." The event became famous, much as Spring Break in Fort
Lauderdale was to be during the 1950s and 1960s.Carnival was the subject of the frothy 1939 motion picture comedy
Winter
Carnival, starring Ann Sheridan, who plays a former Winter Carnival
Queen of the Snows who has made a bad marriage to a European duke and revisits Dartmouth in an attempt to save her younger
sister, the current Queen, from repeating her mistake with a European count.The movie is remembered mostly for its extracinematic associations; F. Scott Fitzgerald and Dartmouth alumnus Budd
Schulberg were hired to write the screenplay. While gathering background in Hanover during Carnival, Fitzgerald became
scandalously drunk at fraternities and was forced to leave the project. Although portions of his work were used, he was not given
a writer's credit. The events and personalities bear a resemblance to those recounted in Schulberg's novel,
The
Disenchanted.Winter Carnival takes place each year on a weekend in February and include such events as ski competitions at the Dartmouth Skiway; a polar bear swim; a cappella and jazz concerts; a human dogsled race; a drag ball; and a showing of the 1939 movie. Students build a large Carnival-themed snow sculpture on the college Green. The 1987 sculpture held the Guinness
record for the "tallest snowman."Numerous parties are thrown by the campus's fraternities and sororities. To protest restrictions placed on the use of beer
kegs during the early 1990s, the 2004 snow sculpture featured the Grinch sitting on a keg. In 1999, students cancelled their
parties to protest other administration policies.
Dartmouth Night starts the college's traditional "Homecoming" weekend
with an evening of speeches, a parade, and a bonfire. Traditionally the freshman class builds the bonfire and then runs around it
a set number of times; the class of 2006 performed 106 circuits, the class of 1999 performed 99.President William Jewett Tucker introduced the
ceremony of Dartmouth Night in 1895. The evening of speeches celebrated the accomplishments
of the college's alumni. Originally the event took place in the Old Chapel in Dartmouth Hall, but over time other events began to
become more important and popular and Dartmouth Night moved outdoors.The focus of Dartmouth Night is the bonfire. Students had built bonfires during the late nineteenth century to celebrate
sports victories, including one in 1888 that recognized a baseball victory over Manchester.
An editorial in The Dartmouth criticized that fire, saying:The students nevertheless continued to build bonfires before and after athletic events, and by the mid-twentieth century
bonfires would be associated with Dartmouth Night.Richard Hovey's
Men of Dartmouth was elected as the best of all the songs of the College at Dartmouth Night in 1896, and today it serves as the school's alma mater. In 1904, the Earl of Dartmouth visited the campus on
Dartmouth Night with New Hampshire politician and author Winston Churchill and marched around the Green with the students. Early
on, the tradition of reading out telegrams (later e-mail messages) sent that night from alumni clubs around the country
began.Football first began to be associated with Dartmouth Night during the 1920s. Memorial Field was dedicated on Dartmouth Night
in 1923. For decades the raucous pre-football rallies remained separate from the dignified
official activities. In 1936, the College first began the tradition of football games
during this weekend; ten years later the formal College events and the rally were combined in a single grand event, and for the
first time Dartmouth Night was intentionally scheduled on what is called Dartmouth Night Weekend.During the 1950s, students adopted a star-hexagon-square structure for the bonfire. Following the tragic bonfire accident at Texas A&M in 1999, the school hired professionals to do
some of the building; nevertheless the night still remains a highlight of the school year.
Clubs
Founded in 1936 by Jack Durrance, the
Dartmouth Mountaineering Club (DMC) is part of
Dartmouth
College's
Outing
Club . It is a student-run club dedicated to
exploring climbing around the world and introducing beginners to the sport. The nearby climbing areas most frequented by members
of the club are Winslow Cliffs near the
Dartmouth Skiway ; Rumney, an East
Coast sport climbing venue that attracts climbers from as far away as
Montreal and Boston; Cannon Cliff in Franconia; and Cathedral and Whitehorse Ledges near North Conway. Every term, the club runs
four beginner trips out to either Rumney or Winslow, one intermediate/advanced trip to Cathedral or Cannon, and one weekend trip
to the Shawangunks in New Paltz, New York. In the winter, DMC clubbers ice climb at Holt's Ledge, Rumney, and Crawford Notch on Mt. Washington. When spring break
rolls around, the DMC ventures out West to climb in a warmer locale for two weeks. For the past two years, Red Rocks, Nevada has
been the destination of choice.DMC members seeking adventure can apply for money from the Mountaineering Club Expeditionary Fund. Initially established in
1963 as the John E. Breitenbach Memorial Fund and later renamed in 1973, its stated purpose is to fund expeditions planned and
executed by club members. After their travels, once they are back on campus, the students present a slide-show of their
experiences to the Dartmouth community, so sharing what they learned and accomplished.
The
Dartmouth Film Society is one of America's oldest
student-run film societies. Established in 1949 by Maurice Rapf '35
[1] , and Blair Watson '21, the DFS is an important
center of film culture in the Upper
Valley area.The DFS presents a themed series of twenty or so films each academic term. "The Open Road," for example, featured road movies,
while "Breakthroughs" presented the breakthrough films of various directors, writers, and actors. The films are projected twice
weekly onto a 16-by-28-foot (5-by-8.5-meter) screen in the college's arts center auditorium and are open to the public.The film society meets regularly to discuss the films exhibited and to develop new series proposals.The DFS also organizes annual tributes to film artists; honorees have included Meryl Streep, Buck Henry, Johnny Depp, Sean Penn, and Budd Schulberg.
As of 2004 Dartmouth College hosts 34 varsity sports: sixteen for men,
sixteen for women, and coeducational sailing and equestrian programs in sailing and equestrian. This place it among the top
United States colleges and universities in this regard. In addition,
there are twenty-three club sports and twenty-four intramural sports.Nicknamed "The Big Green,"
Dartmouth's varsity athletic teams compete in
NCAA Division 1 as well as
in the eight-member Ivy League conference, which includes
Harvard ,
Princeton ,
Yale ,
Brown ,
Columbia ,
Cornell and the
University of Pennsylvania . Some teams also participate in the
ECAC (Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference). Dartmouth athletics have
earned several high honors, excelling in NCAA championships ranging from track and field to basketball, cross country to soccer,
as well as skiing, golf, lacrosse and diving.Dartmouth hosts many athletic venues. Dartmouth College Alumni Gymnasium, the center of athletic life at Dartmouth, is home of
the Dartmouth College Aquatic facilities, basketball courts, squash and racket ball courts, indoor track, fencing lanes as well
as a rowing training center. The college also maintains both indoor and outdoor track facilities, hockey arena, football stadium,
rowing boat house, and tennis complex.As is true of all Ivy League schools, Dartmouth College does not offer athletic scholarships, yet is home to many student
athletes. Currently many as three-quarters of Dartmouth undergraduates participate in some form of athletics.
Coached by Molly McHugh, Kate Woll, and Chris Schmidt, the Dartmouth
Womens Crew ranks among the most
competitive college programs in the country. The team considers itself very lucky to have the Connecticut River as its rowing venue. The stretch of
more than 15 miles of rowable river is only used by Dartmouth crews, Hanover High School crews, and local scullers, so water time
is not hard to schedule and traffic is minimal. Highlights of rowing on the Connecticut include frequent flat water and gorgeous
leaves in the fall. Drawbacks include the late thawing of the ice in the spring and the challenge of avoiding icebergs during the
first week back on the water.
Women’s rowing at Dartmouth was founded as a varsity sport in 1975. Over the past 30
years of rowing the team has graduated three rowers who went on to compete in the Olympics. This reputation has made for a very popular program. Each year the team avidly recruits inexperienced
freshmen to walk on, welcoming them to make an impact on the team. These walk-ons make up more than half of the team while the
rest are recruited women, totaling nearly 60 at the beginning of the fall. Through cuts and self-selection, the freshmen compete
in two or more eights by the time spring season comes around. They are led by a large varsity team, generally made up of around
30 women.The team puts in about 16 practice hours a week, consisting of long endurance building rows, short piece workouts, and weight
training. Every day, each member of the team pushes herself past her limits. While the fall and spring are spent on the water, the most
important training of the year is done in the winter. Indoor facilities consist of over
30 ergs, an indoor rowing tank and Manley Weight Training Gym in the Dartmouth Athletic Center. The Friends of Dartmouth Rowing
Boathouse boat bays are converted into winter training facilities. Here the team is able to practice on slide ergs on which
trains of four erg together, practicing following as they erg.
The Friends of Dartmouth Rowing Boathouse serves as the home for the Womens Crew. It is this building, completed in 1985, where the women of the crew can be found six days a week training for competition. As part of
one of the most competitive college leagues in the nation, the
EAWRC , the women
set lofty goals each year in hopes of further program growth and success.
The
Dartmouth Film Society is one of America's oldest student-run film societies. Established in 1949 by Maurice Rapf, class of '35, and Blair Watson class of '21, the DFS is
still thriving today as the hub of film culture at
Dartmouth College and in the Upper Valley.Committed to fostering a greater appreciation and understanding of cinema, the DFS provides a program of 20 or so films to be
shown each academic term. These films are all bound together by a common theme; past series have included "The Open Road", a
program featuring road movies, and "Breakthroughs", featuring the breakthrough films of various directors, writers, and actors.
The films are projected twice weekly onto the giant 16-by-28-foot screen in the college's arts center auditorium and are open to
students, faculty, and the public. Aside from the films in the program series, the DFS also plays several specials every term;
these can range from sneak previews of upcoming films to hard-to-find rarities like a collection of Academy Award nominated short films.Members of the film society meet once a week to discuss the films exhibited the past week and, at the end of each term, debate
series proposals. Anyone can submit a series, as long as it has a decent variety of older films, new films, documentaries,
foreign films, and silents. The Directorate of the film society, about 25 students and community members, actually vote on the
series.The DFS also organizes annual tributes to worthy film artists. Such distinguished filmmakers as Meryl Streep, Buck Henry, Johnny Depp, Sean Penn, and Budd Schulberg have all received honors from the DFS.
External Links
Dartmouth broadcasting
Dartmouth Broadcasting
Native Americans at Dartmouth
Native Americans at
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College Encyclopedia of North American
Indians Native
American Programs at Dartmouth The Dartmouth
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