The Ruckus Sessions
ONGOING VISIONARY CONVERSATIONS
Debate club meets house party! Live, candid conversations with artists, researchers, and cultural leaders examining the rapidly evolving landscape of contemporary culture.
The Ruckus Sessions
ONGOING VISIONARY CONVERSATIONS
Debate club meets house party! Live, candid conversations with artists, researchers, and cultural leaders examining the rapidly evolving landscape of contemporary culture.
Fall 2026: October 22 with Gus Wenner '12
Sponsored in part by the Marshall Woods Lectureship Foundation of Fine Arts

Thursday, October 22, 2026 | 5:30 PM
Fishman Studio, Granoff Center for the Creative Arts
154 Angell Street, Providence, RI
Student Interlocutor: Jake Loeb ’28 is concentrating in Philososphy, Politics, and Economics. He's been playing and performing music since he was 8 years old.
Gus Wenner ’12, Founder and CEO of Wenner Media Ventures and former CEO of Rolling Stone magazine, returns to Brown this fall for an electrifying Ruckus Session. Wenner is an artist and entrepreneur who has transformed his own experience with creative practice into business models that support the arts. While enrolled at Brown, Wenner collaborated with multiple students and groups as a musician. Following his graduation, Wenner worked at Rolling Stone magazine, expanding the magazine’s footprint during a time of ultimate consolidation in the music journalism industry and eventually serving as the legacy publication’s CEO. Wenner’s latest undertaking, Wenner Media Ventures, serves to invest in music journalism outlets and cultivate the creative and organizational ecosystems that will uplift the artists of today and tomorrow.
READY, SET, RUCKUS!

Join BAI Director Sydney Skybetter for live, candid conversations where visionary artists, researchers, and cultural leaders share their creative practices, discuss the future of arts scholarship, and examine the rapidly evolving landscape of contemporary culture.
In the News
Past Ruckus Sessions
Student interlocutor, Jack Xu ’27 with Chico MacMurtrie and BAI Director Sydney Skybetter. Photos by Laura Kenney.
Tim Blake Nelson and BAI Director Sydney Skybetter
Student interlocutor, Ilektra Bampicha-Ninou with Tim Blake Nelson and BAI Director Sydney Skybetter.
From left to right: Student interlocutor Rishika Kartik, BAI Director Sydney Skybetter, and Dr. Costanza-Chock in conversation on stage at the first Ruckus Session.
BAI Director Sydney Skybetter, and Dr. Costanza-Chock in conversation.
From left to right: Student interlocutor, Lottie Doughty with President and CEO of the Doris Duke Foundation Sam Gill and BAI Director Sydney Skybetter.
From left to right: Student interlocutor, Lottie Doughty with President and CEO of the Doris Duke Foundation Sam Gill and BAI Director Sydney Skybetter.
About Sydney Skybetter

Sydney Skybetter is a choreographer. Hailed by the Financial Times as “One of the world’s foremost thinkers on the intersection of dance and emerging technologies,” Sydney’s choreography has been performed at such venues as The Kennedy Center and Jacob’s Pillow. He has lectured at SXSW, Yale, Mozilla and the Boston Dynamics AI Institute, and consulted for The National Ballet of Canada, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Hasbro, and The University of Southern California, among others. His work has been supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and a Creative Capital “Wild Futures” Award. He is a Senior Affiliate of metaLAB at Harvard University, a frequent contributor to WIRED and Dance Magazine, the Founder of the Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces and Host of the podcast, “Dances with Robots.” Sydney serves as the Director of the Brown Arts Institute, is an Associate Professor of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, and was the first choreographer at Brown University to receive tenure.