The extraordinary quilts of Gee’s Bend, Ala.—including those made by Mary Lee Bendolph—have been compared to the literature of Toni Morrison, jazz classics, and masterworks of modern art. Recognized with a 2015 National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts, Bendolph has been profiled in a Pulitzer Prize-winning essay and served as the focus of the documentary While I Yet Live.

Drum and dance traditions from all over the globe combine this Fall in the premiere of ARC, a multidisciplinary performance suite conceptualized by tabla artist, composer, and artistic director, Lenny Seidman. This original work melds North Indian tabla, Japanese taiko, and a hybrid of contemporary Western, Asian Pacific, and African Diasporic movement into one evening-length performance.

To bring the work of ARC to life, Seidman enlisted the talents of eight highly-distinguished co-creators: tabla artists Daniel Ando Scholnick and Jonathan Marmor; taiko artists Joe Small, Kristy Oshiro, and Isaku Kageyama; and movement artists Laurel Jenkins, Orlando Hunter, and Ani Gavino. Together, the artists created ARC over the course of a three week residency at Swarthmore College, living and working together to build the piece from Seidman’s early sketches. What resulted from their residency is an intimate, electrifying, and cross-cultural performance that convenes an array of forms, styles, and disciplines.

Robin Mandel ’97’s artistic practice combines sculpture, video projections, and collaborations with musicians. Harmonizing traditional craftsmanship with innovative technology, Mandel challenges conventional notions about time, light, sound, and motion. Swarthmore College is pleased to present both Chorus, a five-day series of sound and video projections designed for north campus, and Hold Still, a List Gallery exhibition featuring a selection of multimedia sculptures and projections.

William Edward Burghardt “W. E. B.” Du Bois was born in 1868 and became the nation’s leading social scientist on race, social inequality, African-American life and culture, and the ideology of white supremacy. He famously predicted that “the problem of the twentieth century [would be] the problem of the color line”—a prescient observation that rings truer than ever today, on the 150th anniversary of Du Bois’s birth. With this symposium, Swarthmore College attempts to serve the greater good of Du Bois’s vision via deep listening and democratic voices offered in mutual exchange and respect.

In this world-premiere performance, Benjamin Bagby and Sequentia will chant and sing a number of poetic songs from the medieval northlands (eighth–11th centuries) in Old English, Old High German, and Old Icelandic. Using medieval instruments including Germanic harps and wooden and bone flutes, the sounds will include charms, riddles, elegies, songs of magic and healing, laments over the loss of loved ones, and the pain of exile in a foreign land.