Chapter 11
One Day in the Baret Year
4:15 PM BARET ONLY SPECIAL EVENT In its 7 primary cities, Baret will arrange “Baret Only” special events where its students get a behind-the-scenes look at an important institution in the city. In NYC Baret has arranged for interested students to attend a not-open-to-the-public rehearsal of the Martha Graham Dance Company . Martha Graham is recognized as a primal artistic force of the 20th century, alongside Picasso, James Joyce, Stravinsky, and Frank Lloyd Wright. TIME magazine named her “Dancer of the Century.” Graham’s repertoire of 181 works has engaged noted performers such as Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rudolf Nureyev. The company has performed at the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, the Paris Opera House, Covent Garden, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, as well as at the base of the Great Pyramids in Egypt and in the ancient Odeon of Herodes Atticus theatre on the Acropolis. Following rehearsal, Graham dancers, who fare from around the world, will take questions from Baret’s students.
11:00–11:50 THE NEW STORYTELLERS: FROM BOX OFFICE TO BINGE WATCHING. Dagmar Weaver-Madsen and Ronan MacRory in conversation. Dagmar Weaver-Madsen is a distinguished Danish-American cinematographer based in Brooklyn, NY, renowned for her visually striking and narrative-enhancing work. With an MFA in cinematography from UCLA, she has made a name for herself as a director and cinematographer, particularly recognized for her work on Netflix & A24’s Survival of the Thickest (2023), Sony/ Amazon’s A League of Their Own (2022), Hulu/Disney’s Only Murders in the Building (2021), and HBO’s High Maintenance (2016). Her feature film portfolio includes Kris Swanberg’s Unexpected , which premiered at Sundance Film Festival, and Carlos Marques Marcet’s 10.000KM , which debuted at SXSW. London-based Baret Fellow Ronan MacRory, a filmmaker in his own right, interviews Dagmar exploring the ins and outs of a life in film.
MORNING A morning in downtown Brooklyn might include a nature run in the crisp fall air in Prospect Park, the leaves turning from green to red and brown, or a walk along the East River, with a commanding view of the elegant lower Manhattan skyline. A more relaxed morning might mean a flaky chocolate croissant from a coffee shop, or a fried bacon egg and cheese from one of Brooklyn’s signature bodegas.
10:00 AM–1:00 PM MORNING PROGRAM 10:00–10:50 MANDELA: THE LOST TAPES. A Wide-Ranging Discussion with Rick Stengel Stengel’s career is marked by his
2:00–4:00 PM AFTERNOON OPTIONS, SELF EXPLORATION, ONE-ON-ONE ADVISORY Each afternoon, students choose what they would like to do, including reading a book or exploring the city with fellow students. Once a week, each student meets one-on-one with their Fellow to discuss their Baret year or Capstone project. Baret also provides a variety of Afternoon Options (including SiDs, Seminars in Domains). An example is “Starting Things,” a 14 part seminar on entrepreneurship.
contributions to literature and media. In the 1990s, he collaborated with Nelson Mandela on the autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom.” The many hours of taped interviews with Mandela became the foundation for Stengel’s award-winning audiobook, Mandela: The Lost Tapes . His most recent book is Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation . A graduate of Princeton and a Rhodes Scholar, Stengel has served as Under Secretary of State, Editor of Time Magazine, and CEO of the National Constitution Center. He is a frequent on-air political analyst for MSNBC.
SOME STUDENTS ask “what’s a typical day during the Baret year?” Answer: there isn’t one. The designers of Baret have worked to make every Baret day unusual, exciting, and unlike the prior day or the next day. This is not like school where students rush from the same class week to week, with little choice. Think of Baret like a restau- rant menu: you pick and choose from op- tions carefully prepared by the chef (and then add some ingredients of your own.) Presented throughout this book, there is an overall Baret structure that guides our creation of options for our students. Below, we’ve shown what one weekday of that structure might look like for one student while in New York City in the fall of 2024. Note: these are not theoret- ical possibilities, and all of the following segments have been committed to and booked during our time in NYC.
Chris Whittle, Baret’s Founder, interviews Rick on a life well lived.
9:00–9:30 AM MORNING MEETING
12:00–12:50 FLYING HIGHER: THE COMPANIES
Monday through Thursday, students gather with their House, 10-14 students and their Fellow, to catch up with one another, discuss issues, and coordinate their day ahead.
OF SPACE AND SKY Dr. Ian Thomas
Across 15 years at The Boeing Company, Ian served as CEO of Boeing’s operations on 3 continents including China, India, and Australia. In past years, he has served as the Chief Revenue Officer of World View, a company which has completed 120 stratospheric flights with customers such as NASA and the U.S. Air Force. World View is now developing space tourism. Prior to Boeing and World View, Ian played a pivotal role in shaping US and Allied defense strategies while in the Office of NATO Policy at the Pentagon. Ian holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, a graduate diploma from Stockholm University, and a BA from Amherst College. Ian will be interviewed by Chris Whittle, Baret’s Founder.
EVENING Every evening, students are on their own for dinners with other students throughout the city. If they choose to attend the Graham rehearsal above (which is at Graham’s studios in lower Manhattan), it would be a good time have dinner in nearby Greenwich Village.
That’s a typical Baret day. And then there is sleep.
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BARET SCHOLARS
THE BARET PROGRAM
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