The New Face of January

Last year during Harvard’s inaugural January Term, Emily B. Hecht ’11, woke up before 9 a.m. six days a week. Most Harvard students—at least those who weren’t interning, traveling abroad, or practicing for the upcoming sports season—were building up sleep stores in preparation for the coming semester. Hecht, a participant in the American Repertory Theater’s (A.R.T.) graduate-level training intensive for undergrads, was giving up sleep to work with performance experts from across the world and hone her acting expertise in preparation for a potential career on stage. “They really treated us like budding professionals. They treated us like real potential artists,” she says.

The three-week theater intensive allowed students to interact regularly with big names like Scott Zigler, Director of the Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at the A.R.T.; Jim True-Frost, who was cast in the HBO hit “The Wire”; and David A. Hammond ’70, who has held teaching positions at the Julliard School, the American Conservatory Theater, and the Yale School of Drama.

This J-Term, a larger portion of the student body will have access to experiences like Hecht’s through the introduction of the January Arts Intensives. The college is currently planning seven shorter intensives in comedy, design, creative writing, watercolors, and ceramics, and one three-week performance intensive with a dance track and a theater track. The implementation of such programs is a direct response to President Drew G. Faust’s Arts Initiative, launched in November 2007. Given that they are still in their pilot stage, however, the organizers must work through challenges in balancing varied levels of student ability, ensuring program growth and sustainability, and avoiding the impression that committed artistic production should be relegated to the confines of January.

THE BEST-LAID PLANS...

The original plans for J-Term suffered a blow when the economic crisis hit Harvard. When the new calendar changes were first proposed in June 2007, the month of January turned into an enticingly blank canvas. The Undergraduate Council (UC) spoke with the chairs of the Gen Ed Committee and the Ad Board Review Committee to organize innovative programming, short intensive classes, and opportunities to explore areas students may not have had time for during the school year. J-Term was never meant to be a month-long recuperation of lost sleep for overworked students, but the loss of over one quarter of the endowment limited opportunities for programming during the last weeks of Winter Break.

This January, the story is changing. “This year is really a big experiment,” says Eric N. Hysen ’11, UC Vice President. “This is the first time that students will be able to be on campus participating in programs without class other than Camp Harvard and Senior Week.” The Undergraduate Council has successfully pushed for Optional Winter Activities Week (OWAW), in which students will be able to return to campus a week early and receive funding for creative programming ideas open to the whole campus.

This effort, along with the college’s decision to open campus early to all students, helped set the stage for the new January Arts Intensives. With the freedom of an open, class-free campus, students who crave artistic opportunities will be able to experience them in a unique way. As advertised, interested undergrads will be able to use technology to explore architectural fictions, examine modes of bodily thinking through dance, break into the world of stand-up comedy, and workshop poetry.

The choice to focus on bringing art to campus during J-Term is a reflection of how seriously college officials are taking the Report of the Task Force on the Arts. Published in December 2008, the report presented a detailed and comprehensive reflection on the arts at Harvard that advocated a complete renewal in the way the university thinks about art.

“I think that report has had a large impact on the arts and how it relates to Harvard campus,” says Elizabeth Lerman, the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant and instructor of the dance track of the three-week A.R.T. intensive. “It’s really timely that Harvard is welcoming practicing artists to campus in such a big, or at least such a particular way.”

The report specifically called for greater college recruitment of practicing artists, strengthened links between Harvard University and affiliated arts institutions like the A.R.T., and suggested the creation of undergraduate architecture courses in conjunction with the Graduate School of Design (GSD). The intensives are direct responses to these calls to action: all are conducted by numerous well-respected and award-winning artists, some are provided in conjunction with the A.R.T., and one specifically creates a partnership between the GSD and the college.

“This whole notion of arts intensives grows out of the university’s increased and deepened commitment to promoting arts practice at Harvard University. I think of this as an extension of that bigger commitment to support student art-making,” says Jack Megan, Director of the Office for the Arts (OFA).

A BALANCING ACT

Aspiring arts professionals like Hecht are not the only targets of these January Arts Intensives. Program instructors and administrators make it clear that students of all levels of experience are welcome to join the programs.

For some of the intensives, like “Architectural Fictions,” taught by GSD architecture professor K. Michael Hays and doctoral student Jawn Lim, this will be an easier task to balance than for others. Most students will start out on a level playing field due to the lack of architecture and design classes offered to undergraduates at the college.

“We really want to make it so that we can start without any prior exposure to architecture. That limits what we can do, but I think we can still give people an idea of this way of thinking,” says Hays.

In five six-hour sessions, most of which will consist of studio work interspersed with lectures, Hays hopes to give students a sense of the ways in which architectural ideas fit into a liberal arts education. “It’s sort of our position that architecture is more than just designing buildings and objects. You can think through architecture about being in the world,” he says.

The three-week performance intensive, the second iteration of the A.R.T.’s January offerings to undergrads, has a more challenging task ahead. Balancing complete newcomers with seasoned hands is vital in ensuring the artistic development of all students.

Bianca F. Okafor ’13 is one such newcomer. “I just want to learn something new. I didn’t want to stay home for all of break because I would just get really bored. I don’t really see theater as a career for me,” she says. Her attitude stands in stark contrast to that of Hecht, who will use the upcoming J-Term for thesis work and auditions for theater companies in the area.

Lerman has spent some time thinking about this problem, especially since student artistic pursuit tends to happen more in the realm of extracurricular activities than through organized instruction at Harvard. “It’s true that Harvard has a lot of students who have a lot of artistic background, and they’re hungry,” she says. “The dancers that I met at Harvard on my last visit—I really got a feeling that they’re looking for an intense opportunity to really stretch themselves. It’s a challenge to figure out how to embrace them both.”

Despite these concerns, however, the vast majority of students involved in the intensives will probably already be artistically involved. Advertising for the intensives has not been widely disseminated, focusing primarily on students connected to the OFA via the email subscription list, classes related to the intensive offerings, and the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club (HRDC) email list. “We’ll just keep beating the drums as much as possible,” says Thomas Lee, Program Manager of “Learning From Performers” at the OFA and coordinator of the OFA’s intensive offerings, in speaking to the intention to advertise programs more broadly in the future.

BUILDING MOMENTUM

There is a pervasive feeling of excitement among the artists and administrators planning the intensives, as well as from students who hope to participate. “It is gratifying to see the quantity of applications received and we are pleased to be able to accommodate a majority of the students,” writes Lori E. Gross, Associate Provost for Arts and Culture, in an email. “It is wonderful to see such excitement and enthusiasm from the undergraduates to make art and learn from professional artists.”

If excitement is already high about the intensives, the growth and sustainability of these programs are serious issues to consider for the future. “We’re not trying to undertake massive new programs right now that can’t be funded,” says Megan. “Instead, we’re just making a beginning. By focusing on January and a narrow set of opportunities, it becomes more bite-sized and achievable, and we hope that it creates momentum.”

As it stands, planning and funding for the programs has been cobbled together in the collaboration between the Office of the Dean for Arts and Humanities, the Office of the President, the Office of the Provost, and the Office for the Arts. If the momentum that Megan hopes to achieve takes hold, a more streamlined and centralized administrative, funding, and planning organization for these intensives will most likely be necessary.

Questions will likely arise concerning student admission into the intensives as time goes on. Limited enrollment maximizes the benefit each student gains from the programs, but it comes with its own disadvantages. Newly interested students may have to compete for admission with previous participants hoping to continue their artistic development.

Continuity is another potential challenge that planners have already started to consider. There may be tension between offering tried and tested programs that students enjoy and new, riskier programs from different artists available to work on campus.

“Our thinking is that it will be expanded upon and we will be figuring out a kind of mix of things that have worked or will be working hopefully for this January,” says Lee. “We might repeat them but we might add some new ones for subsequent years. Some will draw more than others and we’ll just have to evaluate how that goes.”

DIVERSION TO DEDICATION

Subtly broadcasted messages can be lost in the shuffle of planning and implementing new programs. Harvard has built its reputation on academia; using J-Term to create intense artistic experiences in a time when the vast majority of the university is on vacation runs the risk of casting artistic practice as activity outside the non-academic sphere, whereas the Task Force specifically called to integrate the Arts into Harvard’s academic arena.

Okafor, Hecht, and Katherine M. Agard ’13, another applicant, admit to the fact that a large part of their decisions to apply for and participate in the intensives had to do with the monotony of being at home for too long. “I didn’t want to be at home for five weeks. I knew I would jump out of my skin with nothing to do,” says Hecht. “I was just kind of at home and was like, I need to do something,” adds Agard, in reference to her last J-Term.

Megan asserts that this is not in any way the intention of the intensives. “I haven’t thought of it in that way, because we are not de-emphasizing support for arts initiatives during the academic year. Indeed, we’re investing more,” he says. In particular, he says, the OFA is currently conducting an international search for a new dance director, and recently hired internationally regarded professionals to conduct the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra and direct choral activities at Harvard. “I think it’s about taking advantage of a unique window of time to make something important happen,” he adds.

“GIVE IT TIME”

The January Arts Intensives can potentially revolutionize the ways in which art-making happens on campus by leveraging Harvard’s ability to draw the best and the brightest from all disciplines, including the arts. There is a buoyant sense of hope in the air, despite the long and winding road from pilot to full potential. “What I hope is that these will excite the student body, will energize them, will teach them new ways of thinking about art-making, and will infuse their creative work when the semester starts up and they undertake their own projects,” says Megan.

Those involved in the programs also caution against over-thinking so early in the process. The college has planted a fragile seed in offering these intensives, and now watching and waiting is the only way forward. “We just have to give it time, give it time to organically grow and develop. This is just a little tiny slice of what could be possible,” says Lerman.

­—Staff writer Araba A. Appiagyei-Dankah can be reached at aadankah@fas.harvard.edu.