Letter from the Chair

Welcome to the Davis Center’s 2026–27 season.

This year the Department of Performing Arts turns twenty, just as the United States turns 250. The coincidence shapes our season. Our American Musical Cultures program connects performances to courses that ask, through the lens of musical life, what culture is, what America is, and how we live together in this complex place. The Friday Music Series joins that conversation, pairing courses like “Rock History,” “Jazz History,” “Hip Hop History,” and a new course on Music Policy and Advocacy with artists who answer “What is American music?” in wildly different ways, be they roots-fingerstyle guitar players, Indigenous singer-songwriters, Japanese-American taiko drummers.

Across music, theater, dance, and public speaking, we believe in praxis: learning through doing. Many courses connect directly to our productions, giving students the chance to make art alongside faculty and guest artists, at the same time giving audiences rare, daring, and eclectic performances you won’t find elsewhere, tied to the critical issues of our time. Our Theater and Performance Studies program mounts two major productions: Qui Nguyen’s She Kills Monsters and Inua Ellams’s The Half-God of Rainfall. Both are thought-provoking works with stagecraft you don’t often see: puppets, rain, video. PostClassical Ensemble, our ensemble in residence, joins the Library of Congress American Folklife Center for “The Legacy of Alan Lomax,” telling the story of the celebrated folk song collector through the symphony orchestra.

Our student ensembles return with new repertoire, from jazz to Brahms’s Requiem. Georgetown University Dance Company and Black Movements Dance Theatre present concerts featuring student choreography alongside professional guest artists in residence. We partner with The Lab for Global Performance and Politics on the Art of Care Initiative, the Music Sustainability Initiative, and our student performing arts groups. And with the Gonda Theatre’s new cinema-grade projector and sound, watch for special film screenings throughout the year.

There’s much to celebrate and interrogate this year.

Benjamin J. Harbert, Ph.D.
Chair and Professor of Music, Department of Performing Arts