Arts & Society

Mary Bird • June 22, 2015

Latin American girls celebrate their 15th birthday in a big way. On June 11, In Series followed suit at DACOR-Bacon House with a garden party, seated dinner and gala musical program. The ambassador of Chile and his Antonia Echenique Celis, as well as Ambassador Emilio Rabasa, Permanent Representative of Mexico to the OAS, and his wife Carmen were honorary patrons. Producing Artistic Director Carla Hübner said, “Talk to your best friends and not so best friends about us, so we are not such a well-kept secret.” In Series takes fresh approaches to the classics and blends performing arts in unconventional ways.
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Gary Tischler • June 18, 2015

“Newsies,” the touring Disney hit musical now at the National Theatre through June 21, is something of a throwback—all the way to the days when Teddy Roosevelt was not president of the United States but governor of New York.

It’s also a rare bird—a musical that combines contemporary set-making (industrial-strength moving parts) with something so rare that it seems fresh. That would be dancing: dynamic, youthful, energetic and athletic dancing that sparks the proceedings almost for its own sake.

Oddly enough, for a big Broadway show, it’s practically accurate, in the sense that there really was a strike of Newsies, the young boys of New York City, who sold the peps, the screaming headline newspapers of the Pulitzers, the Hearsts, the Post, the Times, and others, and paid for the privilege at cutthroat rates.

When the coldly calculating Pulitzer, who could win a Pulitzer for meanest tycoon, raises the price for the newsies, most of them orphans living under deplorable conditions in an era when child labor was still rampant, they do the unthinkable. They go on strike. They’re led by the charismatic but troubled Jack Kelly, who’s helped by the plucky and brave (not to mention cute as a button) reporter Katherine, who gets them a front-page story and picture.

Will the newsies—most of them singing and talking in all the dialects of Brooklyn and the Bronx—triumph against all odds? Can a pumpkin become a coach? This is a Disney effort, after all.

For anybody with a long history or a major in movie shorts, these boys—tough, but sweet and full of dreams that kids in the ghettos of the time carried around like other kids carried toys—are right out of the old Bower Boys series: the only thing missing is a dog.

But Huntz Hall and Leo Gorcey (the old Bowery Boys stars) couldn’t hold a candle to these kids. These boys can dance, they can stomp, the can do somersaults, giant splits and leaps, and they handle anything from a broom to chairs as dancing partners. The big numbers—“King of New York,” “The World Will Know,” “Carrying the Banner,” and “Seize the Day”—are really big dance numbers and they sweep up the audience in their wake. It’s the engine and energy that drives the show and its melodramatic, penny dreadful plot, in which the hero, Jack, yearns for a saner, quieter place like “Santa Fe,” where he hopes to live with his pal Crutchie. (You guessed it, there’s a kid with crutches.)

“Newsies” started out as a 1992 movie which starred Christian Bale (soon to become “Batman”), but flopped mightily. Undeterred, Disney turned it into a wham-bang Broadway musical, which became a major league hit, with a big, youthful following made up with many adolescent girls enamored of the young hero. You could tell by the whistling and squealing.

The book is traditional Disney fare, including a lot of boy-meet-girl, a hero who wants to be an artist, a wise-butt little kid, nasty strike breakers, the imperious Pulitzer in his nest, and so on. It has its echoes—the newsies include among their demands fair wages and safe conditions for children working until they drop in the slums. For some of us who were born and raised in the pre-computer days of ink-stained presses, the show carries a little bit of nostalgia—we remember, if not the actual voices, at least movies in which newsboys yelled “Extra, Extra!” and newspapers were a booming business from which we received, for a dime or a penny or a nickel and a quarter (today’s Post is $1.50), a days worth of entertainment, gaudy, big headline news, births and deaths, the Katzenjammer Kids and the Lone Ranger, Miss Lonelyhearts, and sensational news of movie stars and distant places. Or something like that.

“Newsies,” for all that, is a money’s worth entertainment that delivers a high-flying show,fair-to-middling music (Broadway has yet to figure out just what the music in Broadway musicals is supposed to sound like), a Disney story and world-class dancing.

Pamela Burns •

Carolina Herrera opened her latest CH Boutique on Tuesday, June 9, in D.C.’s CityCenter. The 2,400 square-foot boutique is Herrera’s 21st store in the U.S. The CH Boutique features women’s suits, shoes, accessories and signature gowns, as well as men’s sportswear. The night was a huge success and 10 percent of the profits benefited the national Portrait Gallery.
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Kelly Byrnes •

Journalists, family and fans met June 11 at the National Press Club for the American News Women’s Club’s 21st Annual Roast, which honored “CBS This Morning” host Norah O’Donnell with its “Excellence in Journalism Award.” There were lots of laughs with O’Donnell, but it was Bob Schieffer who stole the show.
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Mary Bird •

On June 4, Esther Coopersmith entertained those gathered for a five-day symposium to support Maha el-Khalil Chalabi, founder of the International Association of Tyre, the American Committee on Tyre and Friends of Tyre, to raise awareness of the UNESCO World Heritage Site in Lebanon. The Senator Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.) and Coopersmith received recognition for their pioneering roles. [gallery ids="102119,133790,133787,133792" nav="thumbs"]

Georgetowner • June 16, 2015

The DC Jazz Festival, which runs from June 10 to 16, announced the recipients of its two major awards last week. 

The 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award will be going to world-renowned drummer and educator Billy Hart and the 2015 John Conyers Jr. Jazz Advocacy Award was awarded  to former publisher of the City Paper  Amy Austin.

The Lifetime Achievement Award—previous awardees have included Kenny Barron, Sadao Watanabe, Roy Haynes, Ron Carter, Jimmy Heath, Eddie Palmieri, James Moody, Ellis Marsalis, George Wein, Buck Hill, Clark Terry, Hank Jones, Billy Taylor and Dave Brubeck—will be given to Hart at the June 14 Sixth & I Synagogue concert by the all-star and rising acoustic jazz ensemble the Cookers.

Hart  is one of the most recorded drummers in the jazz world and has performed with most of the important jazz musicians in history.   Hart, 73, was raised in D.C. and grew up playing alongside such R&B legends as Otis Redding, and Sam and Dave and then with local legend saxophonist Buck Hill.  He also played with guitarist Wes Montgomery and NEA Jazz Master Jimmy Smith, and later recorded with McCoy Tyner, Wayne Shorter, Weather Report’s Joe Sawinul and others.

Hart teaches at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio and is adjunct faculty at the New England Conservatory of Music and at the New England Conservatory of Music.

Austin was feted at a special opening reception for the DC Jazz Festival at the Residence of Japanese Ambassador Kenichiro Sasae June 4.  The John Conyers Jr. Jazz Advocacy Award is presented each year to an individual or organization which has actively supported jazz and the DCJF.  The award is named for Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), who introduced the unanimously passed bill HR-57 in 1987, a bill that declared jazz “a rare and valuable American treasure to which we should devote our attention, support and resources to make certain it is preserved, understood and promulgated.”

Austin — who was introduced by At-large Council member Elissa Silverman, who was once a reporter and “Loose Lips” columnist for Washington’s City Paper — said, “I am honored to be recognized by DC Jazz Festival with the Jazz Advocacy Award in the city of D.C., one with many passions. Jazz and particular the DC Jazz Festival serves as a uniting force across populations and diplomatic boundaries. I’m thrilled to celebrate jazz as a forever growing force of D.C.’s urban heritage.”

Attendees at the reception—which included DC Jazz Festival founder Charles Fishman, executive director Sunny Sumter, current artistic director Willard Jenkins, television news anchor Maureen Bunyan and other dignitaries—were treated to a spectacular concert by gifted young jazz composer Miho Hazama, who conducted a 13-member jazz ensemble which played works composed by Hazama, including music from her album “Journey to Journey,” which contained the essence of both the formalities, and rigorous aspects of jazz and its free-wheeling improvisations.

Gary Tischler • June 11, 2015

In Washington, D.C., it sometimes seems that every day is a commemoration of some other day, some other time.   It’s natural that we do this is in this city. For the country and for the people who live here, this city is a kind of hallowed and symbolic ground in its name, its statuary, its function, its cemeteries and its governmental business of being the pragmatic soul of what we believe and how we present ourselves to the world and to ourselves. 

It is also home to most of the world’s embassies who presented themselves formally and culturally to this city on a daily basis, and also in memory.  That makes Washington a unique place—among us scattered across the city, including Georgetown, are the envoys and functionaries of long-time friends, sometime adversaries,  and former enemies, who also have moments and events  to commemorate from their histories,  events in which they were sometimes co-joined with the United States cooperation and triumph.

Memory—and a desire in difficult times to have things be something other than what they are—serves as a kind of engine on these occasions.  So it was—after the city, and London and Paris, celebrated the 70th Anniversary of Victory-in-Europe Day—or V-E Day—that it came to pass that the American-Russian Cultural Cooperation Foundation and the Embassy of the Russian Federation presided over “Unforgettable Years, 1941-1945,” billed as a “Salute of Arts and Culture to the 70th Anniversary of the Allied Victory in Europe” last week.

Which meant that hundreds of invited guests gathered at the Embassy of Russian Federation in an event—reception, dinner, exhibits, vodka, food, speeches, World War II patriotic posters throughout the embassy and music and stories told as if around a rather splendid campfire—stirring memories recalled of suffering, war and harrowing times in the Russian theater of World War II.  

If the atmospheric setting—some members of the embassy staff were dressed in the uniforms of WWII Soviet Union soldiers—suggested a commemoration of the Russian experience of the war, the theme and focus of the event, echoed both by speakers and the performers, seemed more to focus on a singular aspect of that war—the spirit of assistance, and cooperation that existed among Americans and Russians in their combined efforts to finally defeat Nazi Germany’s war machine.

In particular, the night’s events returned again and again to a singular and triumphant event, when American and Russian troops hooked up at the Elbe River on April 25, 1945, in a joyous, sometimes inchoate meeting of troops, officers and men,  tanks and jeeps, marking the military end of Nazi Germany.   It was in many remembered ways, the high-water mark of American and Russian cooperation, time and again referenced by speakers and performances throughout the evening.

It was noted often that Russian soldiers and civilians suffered inordinately during the course of the war. “Russia deaths totaled 27 million, or roughly 19,000 deaths a day during the course of the war,” said Sergey Kislyak, the congenial ambassador of the Federation of Russia in his welcoming speech. But this was not to be an event only  about the suffering of Mother Russia.  “On this day, we also remember our comrades in arms abroad . . . today we are gathered to remember this important convergence of American and Russian history,” said Kislyak, as he noted that Arlington National Cemetery includes a memorial  to the meeting at the Elbe.  “We hope that the spirit of the Elbe descends on us.”

This was the kind of celebratory, moving and wishful night in which the reality of history, past and current, took a back seat in a vintage WWII jeep with no mention of the Cold War that commenced fairly soon after the Nazis surrendered in Europe.  There was no mention of missiles and arms races, Cuba and Afghanistan, or the tensions that continue over the crisis in the Ukraine.  It seemed that everyone and all wanted to resurrect a singular moment in time, willing it back to life. 

This tends to happen when people—many of them quite prominent—get together in the spirit of a singular, jointly and hard-gained triumph, when soldiers clutched each other in mutual honor of the suffering and courage they all contributed.

We heard from veteran diplomat John R. Beyrle, who told the remarkable story of his father, Joseph Beyrle, a paratrooper from Michigan who jumped behind the lines in advance of D-Day, was captured, escaped in Poland and met a Russian tank unit—commanded by a female soldier—with whom he fought for a time on the Eastern front until being badly wounded and returned to the U.S.   

Rabbi Arthur Schneier, founder and president of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, walking slowly to the podium, told how he was freed from Auschwitz by Russian troops. “Believe me, I was a lot thinner then,” he said.  “No one believed such things could happen.  We cannot ever forget—none of it.”

Susan Eisenhower, the granddaughter of President Dwight Eisenhower who commanded the western Allies’ invasion of Hitler’s Fortress Europe, spoke of her grandfather’s belief in the importance of the “imperatives of peace.”  

In a buoyant performance, former congressman James Symington, a tenor, and Anton Fedyashin, a baritone, combined on singing the popular World War II song, “On a Wing and a Prayer,”  in English and Russian. 

Russian Pianist Yuri Shadrin played Sergei Rachmaninoff stirring “Prelude in G Minor.” A group of performers evoked the period with the moving “The White Cliffs of Dover,” sung by Embassy Series founder and director Jerome Barry. It was all part of a musical program of music popular in the Soviet Union and the United States during the war.

Throughout the evening, several Russian veterans of World War II mingled, shook hands and were honored by the guests. They came from another time . . . on a place . . . on a river . . . in Europe. 
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Carolyn Landes •

The Kennedy Center received “The Blue Star of Life,” a porcelain artwork from Japan, during a May 29 ceremony held in the Terrace Theater of the Center, marking the longstanding relationship between the Kennedy Center and the people of Japan. The dedication ceremony honored the occasion of the 160th Anniversary of the Japan-U.S. Treaty of Peace and Amity, as well as the anniversary of the birth of President John F. Kennedy.

“The Blue Star of Life,” a globe-shaped, porcelain vase of considerable dimensions, was accepted and unveiled by Deborah Rutter, president of the Kennedy Center, and others, including Ambassador Yoshio Karita, chairman of the Blue Star of Life delegation.

Japan has given other gifts to the Kennedy Center. As a gift to mark the 1971 opening of the arts memorial to President Kennedy, Japan presented the 3,000-pound, red and gold, silk curtain for the center’s Opera House stage. In 1975, Japanese Prime Minister Miki presented President Gerald Ford with the funds to build the Terrace Theater as a Bicentennial gift from the people of Japan to the United States.

Remarks were made during the ceremony by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kristie Kenney and Japanese Ambassador Kenichiro Sasae as well as by students from Georgetown University and Keio University. Karita poetically likened the delicateness of the porcelain vase to the fragility of world relations.

Students representing Japan and the United States, including students from Sidwell Friends School and Georgetown University, participated in a “Pebble Drop” ceremony, during which a small satchel of pebbles was dropped into the belly of the vase. Since stone in Japanese is “ishi,” phonetically the same as “will” in Japanese, the pebbles symbolized the will of the world to seek peace and conserve the environment.

A special message from Ambassador Caroline Kennedy was read by a representative of the United States Embassy in Japan, expressing Kennedy’s gratitude for the gift. “The symbolism of the vase captures the best values, hopes and dreams of the American and Japanese peoples,” Kennedy’s note read. “I look forward to being able to drop my own pebble in the vase during my next visit to the Kennedy Center.”

Following the dedication ceremony, a brief reception was held on the Terrace level during which a toast led by student Jack Hannah of Sidwell Friends School was made. Hannah talked about his recent trip to Japan and the lasting impact the new relationships he forged while there have had on him. “Friendship is important,” said Hannah, becoming a bit misty-eyed as he alluded to the significance of strong international relations. “It makes things better for everyone, everywhere.” The group of American and Japanese dignitaries gathered around Hannah emitted a rousing cheers, appreciative of his sentiment.

On the anniversary of the birth of one of America’s most beloved presidents, who emphasized the importance of international peace and development, inside the halls created as a living memorial to his life, friendship was, indeed, alive and well.
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Robert Devaney •

The Georgetown Senior Center — which meets two times a week at St. John’s Church on O Street for lunch as well as social and educational programs — got a special treat June 3 from a group of energetic real estate agents from the Georgetown office of Long & Foster Real Estate & Christie’s International Real Estate. Agents offered up an indoor picnic of cheeses, charcuterie, tuna and chicken salad sandwiches as well as slices of crowd-pleasing strawberry short cake.

The Long & Foster project leader was Margaret Heimbold with the help of Natalee Snider. Volunteers included Susan Daves, David Snider, Olena Norman, Derry, Haws, Patricia Sonaty, Rose-Marie Harris, Thomas Knobloch, Scout Sinclair, John Arnold, Emmanuel Sturley, Judi Cochran and her daughter Edina Morse. The annual picnic luncheon at St. John’s for the seniors is part of Long & Foster’s company-wide Community Service Day.
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Carolyn Landes • June 10, 2015

Around 500 of the city’s most philanthropic glitterati gathered May 20 at Tudor Place in Georgetown for the Historic House and Garden’s 23rd Annual Spring Garden Party. This year’s social event was chaired by Elizabeth Powell of Georgetown.

Under an expansive, luminous, white tent surrounded by pristine gardens and an immaculately manicured lawn, guests gathered to celebrate and honor longtime leader and supporter of Tudor Place, Ellen MacNeille Charles, who was given a surprise horse-drawn carriage ride from her 31st Street home to Tudor Place, just up the street.

Charles, a board president emeritus, has made a lasting impact on Tudor Place over the years through her leadership, advocacy and special blend of experience, wisdom and good humor. She was presented with an engraved cup and artwork and gave a gracious speech, thanking attendees for their patronage of Tudor Place.

Interests that inform the life of Charles were woven into the party scene: tablecloths were chocolate brown and white to reflect the racing silks of Charles’s Hillwood Stable, the topiary showed her love of dogs (and show dogs), one cocktail was called BandBox in honor of her racing horse. The Foxcroft Chorale from Charles’s alma mater during the evening.

At the presentation, it was announced that the garden party helped to raise more than $300,000 for one of Georgetown’s crown jewels, as Tudor Place itself was bathed in artful lighting.

Party patrons mingled, sipping mint juleps and tasting light bites, including lamb chops and salmon. In the crowd of prominent Washingtonians and guests from around the country and abroad, ambassadors, architects, business leaders, community leaders and neighbors were dressed to the nines in their garden-party best.

Through its education programs, Tudor Place’s rich heritage provides a living classroom for subjects including American history, the environment and architecture for more than 3,000 school children every year in D.C. and the surrounding areas.
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