Encore!

Every morning the Hopkins Center wakes and shakes off the night as students arrive for breakfast at the Courtyard Café and check their Hinman boxes. Through afternoon classes and evening rehearsals the Hop buzzes into the late hours—sometimes all night—with performances, 24-hour drawing marathons and, of course, Dartmouth Seven seekers.

Flanking the southern edge of the Green, Dartmouth’s pint-size version of New York City’s iconic Lincoln Center turns 50 this year. The Hop, named one of the nation’s exemplary performing arts centers by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1988, attracts more than just performing artists. The Hop is not special because of its awards, big-name acts or even the sheer volume of its shows. The Hop invites everyone in—from athletes eating after practice to the premed major who saw his first musical at the Hop and 45 years later is a Tony Award-winning Broadway director. It’s a home for raw talents and the just raw: Students make costumes, build sets and slap together a lot of wobbly chairs in the woodshop. Much has changed in the last five decades, but the Hop remains the cultural heart of campus, beating with the nit and grit and grind of people trying to make something of their art—and of themselves.

The Hopkins Center hosts more than 500 events annually, including receptions upstairs at the Top of the Hop lounge. Students have long sought good luck by rubbing the nose of Warner Bentley’s bust, opposite the Jaffe-Friede Gallery (one of six galleries in the Hop). Some have taken to rubbing his left ear, too, as evidenced by the bronze sheen. Bentley was the Hop’s first director.

The view of Baker Library across the Green from the Top of the Hop in January 2012. Hop architect Wallace K. Harrison, a favorite of New York Gov. Nelson A. rockefeller ’30, later designed the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in New York City.

Spaulding Auditorium screens more than 200 films a year and hosts scores of concert performances for groups such as the Dartmouth Symphony orchestra. With 900 seats, it is the largest theater on campus.

More than 520 stage lights cast their glow at the Moore Theater (left). Costume shop workers estimate they have enough shoes, jackets and clothing (middle) to assemble 4,200 costumes of all sizes from a variety of periods. Dressing rooms feature the original 1962 light fixtures (right).

Moore Theater (middle) is a 480-seat venue for theater and dance performances. Each term students produce three shows at the Bentley Theater (right), an intimate black-box space with 181 seats. When the theater is empty, a light remains on at center stage (left) as part of a long-standing theater supersttion and as a matter of safety.

In an era of smartphones, this old phone booth- one of two on the ground floor—attracts few callers. For five decades students have collected mail at their Hinman boxes (middle and right), an area that was recently renovated.

The Hop’s art studios (middle) will relocate to the new 105,000-square-foot Visual Arts Center, due to open this fall. Claflin Jewelry Studio (left) and the woodworking shop (right) draw students in search of out of-the-classroom creativity.

Courtyard Café bustles with activity, serving customers from late morning until just after midnight every day. With an auditorium, two theaters, a recital hall, studio space for artists, Alumni Hall, six galleries, a restaurant, and woodworking and jewelry studios, the Hopkins Center should remain a campus hub for years to come.

Additional photographs of the Hop can be found at www.dartmouthalumnimagazine.com