Septime Webre on the grace of ‘Gatsby’
• May 3, 2012

Septime Webre is fresh.

Celebrated, influential and exceptionally charismatic, Webre has been the Artistic Director of the Washington Ballet since 1999. Whether talking about Balanchine or the weather, everything he says seems fresh, in the moment, right now. He may have a spiel, but if he does, it is surely of his own immediate invention.

Walking through the halls and mirrored classrooms of the ballet school on Wisconsin Avenue, you get the sense that Webre’s mind is a restless one. He is thinking ahead and remembering all at the same time, while somehow maintaining total focused.

No questions about it, he’s got the charisma, a star quality that is also down-to-earth and earthy. You’re likely to end up talking about anything at all, not just the subject at hand.

The subject at hand is the return of “The Great Gatsby,” Webre’s spectacular dance version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, an unforgettable take on the grand theme of the American dream.
“That’s exactly it,” he says. “That’s what it’s all about. The idea, the imagining of the American dream. I loved that movie version with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, which seems to be an ideal visualization of the book. It was just, I don’t know, enthralling.”

This is the second go around for Webre’s “Gatsby,” but if you listen to Webre, it’s as if he just thought about doing it a minute ago—and for a lifetime too.

“Two years ago, it was a huge success, no question about it,” he says. “But we had no idea that’s what was going to happen. I thought it was a risky thing, adapting a great American novel and making a ballet out of it. There was another version of it in Pittsburgh, but that’s the extent of it to my knowledge. And what I saw was something that transcended classical ballet and modern pieces. It was a dance based on a novel, a modern story ballet.

“I knew this would require new ideas, new ways of doing things, different sorts of music. It would be very American in spirit, look, tempo, movement and sound. We tried to get the sound of the times—the roaring twenties—into it. That up-beat, Charleston music, the blues, beginning jazz and ragtime. It had a certain tempo and I knew it would be very different than what audiences were used to. It goes against the grain of classical story ballet but it is a story ballet.”

Sitting behind his desk, Webre still looks lanky and casual, his hair dark and loose as if spent the morning dancing and was still shaking it off. He is the type that wants to share what’s on his mind, the kind of stuff he dreams or hears in music. The late and strange jazz singer Chet Baker is a strong favorite of his and you could see how his music might work its way into the background of a dance piece. “Baker was an original,” he says. “We didn’t use his music, but we incorporated narration, blues singing, tap dancing .

“We didn’t know what to expect,” he says of his first production of Gatsby. “We had no idea how it would be received, or if anyone would come.”

They did. While critical reaction was sometimes mixed, Webre was applauded for creating something different, new and original, and audiences came in droves. “In attendance terms, it was our best production outside of ‘Nutcracker’,” he says.

“But that’s not the only reason to do it and see it,” he goes on, trailing evermore into the winding pathways of his thoughts. “Two years ago we were in a recession, and we’re still in hard times—look what’s happening out there. There’s this vast divide economically. People on the outside looking in. And that’s what Gatsby is, an outsider. That’s what drew me to the project. I understand that feeling. I’m an immigrant. And it’s the central tragedy of Gatsby.”

But his motives reach beyond the immediate present. “I also wanted to make it big, sprawling, entertaining,” he says. “I wanted to capture a time when the American Dream seemed possible for anybody, not just the moneyed class that Daisy Buchanan comes from. There is a tremendous amount of energy in this production. We’ve done more than try to get at the essence of a novel. It’s about the spirit of an age in American history where anything was possible.”

That’s why you have E. Faye Butler, one of Washington’s finest singers and actresses, fresh off two big successes at Arena stage, singing in the production. And there’s tap dancer Quynn Johnson and actor Will Gartshore. The music—a distillation of jazz age works by Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Tommy Dorsey and original music by Billy Novick—is performed by Novick’s Blue Syncopators.
Webre’s description of specific sequences—a dance set on a golf course, one of Jay Gatsby’s gin-driven parties, a solo focusing on the plight of the anguished and betrayed George Wilson—puts you almost right into the production before you even see it.

Jared Nelson will again perform the role of Jay Gatsby, and Jonathan Jordan is returning as Nick Caraway. Emily Ellis and Maki Onuki will share the role of Daisy Buchanan.

Webre says this production is not the same as the one performed two years ago. “We have different cast members, for one thing. But we’ve also refined it, tightened things up. I see it a little more clearly now, “ Webre said.

In the future, Webre hopes to venture more often into modern literature as a source for choreography and dance. “I think about Tennessee Williams’ work,” he says. “’Streetcar,’ for one. It’s an opportunity to stretch boundary, to meet new challenges.” Frankly, that’s exactly what Webre has achieved with “The Great Gatsby.”

“The Great Gatsby” will be performed at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater Nov. 2 through 6. For more information visit Kennedy-Center.org.

Metropolitan Cooking & Entertaining Show Preview at PS 7
•

On Oct. 14, Denise Medved, founder of the Metropolitan Cooking & Entertaining Show, and Peter Smith, Executive Chef and Proprietor of PS 7 Restaurant, hosted a media preview reception for the upcoming Metropolitan Cooking & Entertaining Show. The Nov. 5-6 event will feature Jacques Pepin, Paula Deen, Giada De Laurentiis and Guy Fieri plus legendary Jacques Pepin. PS 7 staged a “cocktail throwdown” between mixologists ?Gina Chersevani and Owen Thomas. The preview was not only tasty but guests left with a major goody bag that included products from Pasta Valente, AlicitaSalsa of Great Falls, VA, and Peanut Butter & Co. [gallery ids="100362,110138,110117,110134,110130,110122,110126" nav="thumbs"]

‘30 Americans’ Say It Loud
•

Walking up the grand staircase of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and into the rotunda, a noose tied at the end of a twenty-foot rope hangs from the middle of the domed ceiling. It floats heavily about ten feet off the ground. Circling the noose are nine wooden chairs on which Klan masks sit upright, their hollow eyes facing the rope as if in worship. The next things you see in the gallery, taking up the enormous wall at the entrance to the “30 Americans” exhibit, are the words “SAY IT LOUD.” You can feel James Brown belting into the microphone and you finish the lyrics quietly to yourself:

I’m black and I’m proud.

Brown recorded that song in 1968. There were still documented lynchings in the U.S. in 1968.

Like this juxtaposition, “30 Americans” offers an unrestrained and uncompromising dialogue on what it means to be black and American, exposing the racial, societal and cultural demons in us all, and forcing us to confront those things we spend our lives trying to ignore.

I am not a cultural historian, and I cannot pretend to understand the society or struggles of black America across the last century on any more than a literary level. So in order to discuss this show with any honesty or integrity, I have to strip away my third-party neutrality, my anonymous journalistic voice, and face it as a human being. I am a young white male. The baggage I carry into this show is that of ambiguous, quiet guilt, self-imposed ignorance and displaced confusion. I cannot help feeling a little self-congratulatory—and subsequently low—to be partaking in this act of cross-cultural dialogue, this academic diplomacy in exploring the art and sensibilities of another culture that is actually sort of my own culture. Was it going to isolate my whiteness? Are the stereotypes my own social filtering, or am I seeing them because the artist intended to show them outright? Coming into this exhibition, however, I felt connected with so much of this work.

The affectations and fetishized materials used by artists throughout the exhibition—shea butter, wax, cotton, soap, plastic rhinestones—the symbols and references to slavery, sharecropping and lynch mobs, the societal pigeonholes of basketball and hip-hop, were all things I fundamentally recognized. The often excessive glitz and grime of the work found me experiencing a world of which I have always lived just outside. I found unusual comfort in my kinship with the material, in understanding the ironies, injustices and tribulations of black America better than I realized. That was a short-lived and rather diluted epiphany.

Zora Neale Hurston, the seminal African American folklorist and anthropologist, wrote on the subject of understanding African American culture:

[African American culture is] particularly evasive. You see we are a polite people and we do not say to our questioners, “Get out of here!” We smile and tell him or her something that satisfies the white person because, knowing so little about us, he doesn’t know what he is missing…

A self-portrait by Xaviera Simmons shows the artist with her brown skin colored coal black and sitting naked before her camera in an overgrown wheat field with a righteous afro. In the opposing image, Simmons stands in the field, wrapped in a trench coat as black as her darkened skin. The images are a surge of carnal and spiritual defiance, pointing to the stigma of African heritage and its increasingly dramatic, often misguided interpretations. We may see her and we may judge her on the surface, but that doesn’t mean we understand anything about her. We have not been let in.

Hank Willis Thomas exposes the trappings of African American youth culture with pop-poster-like images you might see tacked onto the wall of a college dorm room, but with a dark and troubled conscience. ‘Basketball and Chain’ depicts the lower half of two young black men in basketball jerseys jumping high into the air, a basketball chained to their leg. In another image, a Nike brand-shaped scar is etched into the shaved head of a young black man. It is not difficult to intellectualize the paralyzing societal delusions of urban teenagers striving for athletic fortune without other foreseeable options, but the struggle is not in seeing it. The struggle is in living with it or being able to change it.

Men stand poised between self-righteousness and preemptive submission in the paintings of Barkley L. Hendricks. A freestanding wall made of raw cotton and wax reaches almost to the ceiling. The cryptic symbology of Jean-Michel Basquiat and the divine, tragic beauty of Kehinde Wiley’s monumental 25-foot portrait, ‘Sleep,’ both have the power to unhinge your jaw in wonder and contemplation: what does it feel like to be black and American?

The difficulty in dealing with such deeply rooted, socially inflammatory subject matter is that it can tend toward the overwrought, and vehemence often gets in the way of true significance, running the risk of beating its audience over the head with its message. But “30 Americans” handles itself with grace and perspective, facilitating an open, honest conversation with its audience.

But the depths of what I may never understand linger in the back of my throat. I get the references to blaxploitation films. I am left sad and weak by the images of malnourished slaves and lynch victims. I empathize with the innumerable injustices the African American people have faced, and I admire “30 Americans” for providing a lens into the contemporary manifestations of these displaced feelings and issues. But the subtexts might forever elude me: what does it mean to be black and American today?

For some, this show is the embodiment of ambiguous race and class confusions neglected in our daily lives. For African Americans of my generation, I imagine “30 Americans” is a conversation across generations of families who have been dismantled and disassembled, and who put themselves back together through their stories, their art and the resilience of their spirit. “30 Americans” begins to explore what it would take to really exist in a post-racial society. It would seem that the answer is to understand—not shy away from—our distinctions.

“30 Americans,” at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, is on display through Feb. 12, 2012. For more information visit [Corcoran.org.](http://www.corcoran.com/)

TheatreWashington Star Gala & Benefit Auction
•

The 27-year old Helen Hayes Awards have been transformed into theatreWashington, the only organization dedicated solely to promoting, representing and supporting all segments of Washington’s professional theatre community. On Oct. 28, the 2011 Helen’s Star was presented to theatre patron and donor Jaylee Mead, who Washingtonian magazine credited for helping make “the Washington-area theatre-building boom possible.” In his introductory remarks, Board Chairman Victor Shargai said “tonight we metaphorically raise the curtain on theatreWashington.” Sebastian Clark of Doyle New York led a live auction that included escapes to Nevis, Thailand, Canada, Peru and two premium house seats for Book of Mormon on Broadway. [gallery ids="100364,110137,110168,110164,110142,110160,110156,110147,110152" nav="thumbs"]

‘Amazing!’ Mel Bochner in the Tower
•

An art professor once gave me a great piece of advice: “Whenever you look at a work of art,” he said, “always ask yourself one question: What is it?” It is with this unimpressive mantra that I walk into every museum and approach every exhibit. For whether I am looking at a Titian mural (a portrait) or one of David Smith’s twisting metal sculptures (an abstract), this process helps me define the parameters of the artwork and experience things evenly and honestly. But entering the Tower of the National Gallery of Art to see the recent exhibition of Mel Bochner, I was at a loss for definition. Ironically enough, it was a room full of words.

In the mid- to late 1960s, Bochner created a series of portraits of friends and colleagues using only words written on paper, assembled and organized largely through studying Roget’s Thesaurus. One of the founding fathers of conceptual art, Bochner has spent his career questioning the nature of the art object, focusing on process, perception and idea over—and often in lieu of—the usual conclusion of artistic practice: a physical work of art.

For example, his Measurement series used black tape to make measurements directly onto walls, effectively making large-scale diagrams of the rooms in which they were installed. But through making and compiling words, Bochner found a depth, eloquence and historical context uniquely suited to his palette—and what he perhaps never found in the standard definition of painting. Bochner would not paint a portrait. He would paint: “Portrait, Depiction, Archetype, Likeness, Model, Effigy.”

“The thing about English that’s so fascinating as a language is its ultimate flexibility,” Bochner says. “One thing about the thesaurus is that they always add words but rarely eliminate things. So you get an archeology of language.”

This is the foundation of Bochner’s recent work, a rather idiosyncratic history of English. His earlier words-based works were meant to be portraits, as well as erudite studies in the flaws, redundant coextensions and contradictions of English. His new work, the primary focus of this exhibition, has taken the form of borderline social activism, revealing an ever-evolving lexicon where “Amazing” is replaced by “OMG,” and “Screw the Pooch” has eclipsed “Perish.” It also reveals more than a few of the artist’s bugbears, philosophical and moral uncertainties, and the result is a remarkably naked, honest and fulfilling experience.

It had been over 30 years since Bochner made—or even looked at—his initial thesaurus series. But when he reexamined the drawings for a retrospective of his work at Yale in 1995, “My response was, there’s probably more juice in that lemon—probably worth another squeeze.”

The first new word-works he made were revisited portraits of Eva Hesse and Robert Smithson (both the originals and the revisited portraits are on view in the exhibition). “The earlier ones have the certitude of my youth—black ink, no mistakes,” Bochner says. “And I couldn’t go back to that anymore, it’s not my attitude toward life. So I redid them with charcoal and kept erasing and reworking and it formed a kind of bridge.”

But, as it seems, Bochner’s “attitude toward life” rapidly took to the forefront of his new work, evolving it from portraiture of the individual to portraiture of time, place and sentiment. The headlining diptychs of the exhibition, “Master of the Universe,” “Oh Well,” “Amazing!” and “Babble” are monumental paintings over eight feet tall, painted in crass neon hues with a bubbly Comic Sans-type font.

“These paintings are my response to everything I see around me,” he says. “They address the disillusion of language in terms of contemporary discourse. I look at this as basically an inarticulate expression of the underlying contradictions of the systems we live in, with a lack of articulate consciousness. And maybe it’s an educational deficit.”

The political edge of these pieces is hard to ignore. “It was very important to me to have that painting, ‘Master of the Universe,’ in Washington,” he says. “And I hope that people get, without my having to explain, the sociocultural undertones of that painting next to the other painting, ‘Oh Well.’”

“I long ago gave up on the idea that art can change capitalism,” Bochner says. “But anything that can bring people to greater consciousness about their own experience is positive and, I believe, a step in the right direction.

For instance, it is no coincidence that his painting “Amazing” begins with the words Amazing and Awesome—biblical words with which the Old Testament denoted God’s power—and then runs through the chronology of evermore contemporary exclamations, until concluding like a fart with OMG. The Awesome becomes more of a self-involved hyperbole than anything worthy of real rejoice.

“I want the paintings to be part of a conversation, a discourse,” he says. “Otherwise, why use language? The best quote I know about this is from Nietzsche: ‘We write not only to be understood, but also to be misunderstood.’ And that’s really it. To be misunderstood is to carry forth the conversation. It’s to raise questions, create arguments and disagreements. That’s basically what philosophy is. People misunderstanding each other.”

For a lifelong conceptual artist, Bochner’s new work is uncharacteristically ubiquitous, and it dances oddly around abstract expressionism and pop art. On the one hand, in answer to my self-imposed question, What is it? the answer could not be more tangible or concrete. It is words. Just like Warhol’s soup cans or Van Gogh’s purple irises, the work is inert. But a series of words cannot help but be read and, just as in abstraction, the interpretations can spin out endlessly and wildly. To quote theorist and critic Frederic Jameson, “The work…is taken as a clue or symptom for some vaster reality which replaces it as its ultimate truth.” The beauty of Bochner’s exhibition runs synonymous to the crudity of daily American life: we are free to pay as much or as little attention as we please, but there’s no denying the harsh reality before us, displayed in bold bright colors across the walls of our consciousness.

Mel Bochner’s Thesaurus Works are on view at the National Gallery through April 8, 2012. For more information visit Nga.gov/Exhibitions [gallery ids="100403,113248,113239,113233,113227" nav="thumbs"]

George Stevens Jr.: the Man behind the Kennedy Center Honors
•

Talking with George Stevens, Jr. in his wonderland office at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on a mid-November afternoon, you’d hardly know it was only two weeks until the annual national cultural fete and red-carpet extravaganza that is called the 34th Annual Kennedy Center Honors.

It was quiet at the Center, sun drenching the Hall of Nations foyer and Stevens ushering me in to his office, a remarkable place full of old movie posters, lots of Emmys and other awards, volumes of scripts and scrapbooks. Casually dressed in a blue sweater and slacks, he immediately takes you on a quick little tour of the walls and turns you into a gawker as you stare at a poster for “Shane,” a drawing of his father, the Oscar-winning film director George Stevens in a poker game with his friends, a poster for “The More the Merrier,” a 1940s more-or-less screwball comedy featuring Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea, a future star of gritty cowboy movies.

The office is best described as a vibrant display of the professional lives of Stevens Senior and Stevens Junior, which, taken together, are examples of lives lived that purposefully made a difference.
And we haven’t even talked about the Kennedy Center Honors, which this year, with all the usual glitz, glitter and presidential presence, will be bestowed upon Actress Meryl Streep, the phenomenal cellist Yo-Yo Ma, legendary Broadway chanteuse Barbara Cook, jazz original Sonny Rollins and singer Neil Diamond on Dec. 4 at the Opera House.

It all began in 1978 with honors to Marian Anderson, Fred Astaire, George Balanchine, Richard Rodgers and Arthur Rubinstein, and Stevens tells you a story about the audience jumping to its feet after seeing 1939 footage of Anderson singing at the Lincoln Memorial, having been denied use of Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution.

It isn’t just that Stevens is and has been the producer of the Honors, both the live event at the Opera House and the CBS television show that is derived from it (to be aired Dec. 27 at 9 p.m.) It’s that basically, the Honors were his idea, inspired very much by the words of President John F. Kennedy, which can be found carved on the wall of the center.

“Well, it came out of a conversation with Roger Stevens [founding chairman of the Kennedy Center; no relation] back in 1974, and I suggested that the center really needed its own event,” Stevens said. “Roger asked if I had any ideas. And I did. I said that the center should have an event that honored the great figures in the performing arts. A lot had to be done, but that was the basic idea.”

It was more than that of course; it was about the very idea of the Kennedy Center itself and its basic tenets as expressed by Kennedy himself in a 1963 speech at Amherst. “That statement where he said ‘I look forward to an America that is not afraid of grace and beauty . . . I look forward to an America that will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business and statecraft.’”
Stevens allows that he has some influences on the choice—made by the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees but also national cultural figures, previous winners and others. The proceedings are, of course, secret, but Stevens adds, “I like to think I have considerable input.”

Also secret are the surprises that come with the night’s entertainment and special guests, like the outburst of talent that included Oprah Winfrey and Beyoncé honoring Tina Turner in 2006, or Jessica Simpson leading a star-studded array of female country superstars honoring Dolly Parton in 2008.
So is Margaret Thatcher coming for the Meryl Streep honors? “I don’t know about that,” Stevens said. “But there will be surprises.”

It’s fair to say that Stevens is a historically serious man. Being the founder of the Kennedy Center Honors is no small thing, but it’s not the only thing. There’s a note of serendipity that runs through his life and career, a kind of story with a theme about the value of culture as a way of moving hearts and minds. The Honors—an occasion for pomp and circumstances and rolling of red carpets—are nevertheless a celebration of the lifetime achievements and careers of legendary, giant-sized figures.
He has always said that the Honors are really two shows—the one that is staged in front of a stellar audience of 2,000 or so at the Opera House and the one that’s created to become a television show for the whole world.

“It’s quiet today,” he said. “But the week of the Honors—when the performers and the honorees fly in, the week of the dinners, the rehearsals, the logistics, and all the people you have to deal with, that’s still pretty intense, for me, and everyone else. It’s always thrilling; it’s always exciting, an honor and really hard work.”

For the past several years, Stevens, has worked with his son Michael as co-producer, on the Honors show and the “Christmas in Washington” yearly production. “Michael brings his own perspectives to this, his tastes, his knowledge, what he knows about music and the whole world of arts, the people he knows.

“And yes, it is very, very gratifying to work with Michael, for me, as a producer, in terms of the history of this enterprise, but also the family history. It means a lot to me as a father, and I have to tell you how important his contribution is to accomplishing what we do.”

Stevens has become with the years a kind of cultural icon in this city. He, his wife Elizabeth and his family have been Georgetown residents for decades on Avon Place. In interviews, in a recent roundtable talk on “Creativity in America” at the Aspen Institute, and in person Stevens always comes across as a serious man, without getting within a continent’s distance of becoming pompous or overbearing. He is one of the most accessible of public figures, one of the least “me-me” men you’ll encounter.

He’s led a big life in the big, wide world — son of legendary Hollywood director George Stevens, working on major movie sets, a JFK “New Frontiersman” working to produce documentaries for Edward R. Murrow when he headed the U.S. Information Agency, founder of the American Film Institute, leading film conservation and preservation, founder and co-producer of the Kennedy Center Honors, film director and producer (“A Filmmaker’s Journey,” “The Murder of Mary Phagan”) playwright (“Thurgood”) and author of “Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age at the American Film Institute”). In October, President Barack Obama named Stevens co-chairman of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities.

That’s by way of roll-the-credits bona fides. In some circles, he’s even been described as “Hollywood royalty.”

“What do I think of that?” he says. “I think it’s mostly B-S.”

The truth of the matter is that he came to do what he’s done honestly: lots of hard work, the obvious ability to lead and a passionate, creative urge to be an advocate for culture, not only for its own sake but also for social change and justice.

“We didn’t have anything like the Kennedy Center Honors, and so we have celebrated all sorts of performance excellence,” he said. “And it changed with time, sure. More and more, we all realized the importance of popular culture, and it became a part of the mix: I think Bob Dylan was the first figure of that sort to become an honoree, but not the last.”

Stevens admits working on the Honors enriched him. “I’m a film guy,” he said, “that’s my experience, my comfort zone. So, being around these huge, legendary figures in dance, opera, music, that was an enormously rewarding experience for me.”

That seriousness of purpose, that liberality of spirit and focus, comes in part from his father. Making the documentary “A Film Directors Journey” set Stevens on his own creative path, much like his father’s two-year experience of World War II turned him into a man with a mission that resulted in the great American trilogy, “Shane,” “A Place in the Sun” and “Giant.” With Stevens Jr., the documentary on his father was followed by films about “The Murder of Mary Phagan,” “Separate but Equal” and the play “Thurgood” among other projects.

There are rows of scripts for each Kennedy Center Honors in his office, and each five-minute plus film about each honoree, not to mention scrapbooks and photographs for the AFI Lifetime Achievement Awards, which he has also produced. It’s dangerous being in that office; you get lost in it, so many scenes from movies start running through your head, so many stories.

You can imagine the Stevens spending hours here without ever being alone.

“It’s been 34 years since then,” he said. “I feel more creative, fuller of ideas than ever.” Proof: he’s about to finish a documentary about the Washington Post editorial cartoonist Herb Block, and a second set of “Conversations with Great American Directors” are coming out.

Of necessity, life and death and all that make for omissions on the Honors list. One obvious one is, of course, George Stevens, Sr., who died in 1975. You don’t ask, but chances are he would have been a cinch.

Speaking in public like the recent Aspen Institute or in interviews, Stevens often tells the story about being with his father after he had won the Oscar for Best Director for “A Place in the Sun.”

“He said to me ‘We’ll know how good it really is 20 or 30 years from now.’”

Stevens thinks it holds up, 50 plus years later. It’s an American classic. But Stevens’ life, adding up the accomplishments and their meaning, also hold up with time. The son, in this case, also rises to the occasion.

Kennedy Center Honorees

It’s star power week in Washington. This is the week of the 34th Annual Kennedy Center Honors, which means that among us will be five of the nation’s finest, most enduring and sparkling legends and stars of the performing arts.

Meryl Streep, touted as the most awarded and award-nominated actress ever, will be honored again this year. Her record: 45 film roles, 16 Oscar nominations and two wins, 25 Golden Globes and so on.

Yo-Yo Ma’s selection casts him in the shadows of the major classical music performers who formed a large number of the honorees in the early years of the Kennedy Center Honors. But to say he is a classical musician is to miss the pioneer, the genre-bender and the passionate cellist which he truly is. He has recorded 75 Sony Albums and has collaborated with the likes of Paquito Rivera, Renee Fleming, Dave Brubeck, Bobby McFerrin and James Taylor.

Sonny Rollins, the oldest among the honorees at 81, is one of the last of the old giants of bee-bop and improvisatory jazz on the saxophone, or anything else, as well as being a gifted composer. As he put it when he received the National Medal of Arts in March of this year, “I accept on behalf of the gods of our music.”

Barbara Cook may be, as Alistair Macaulay of the Financial Times says, “The greatest singer in the world,” but she’s actually a little more than that. She cut her singing teeth in the 1950s on national tours of “Oklahoma,” and “Carousel” and hit all the notes in the Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide.” Her career almost six decades: it’s so rich that it seems too short.

Neil Diamond has been around a long time too, and sometimes we forget that. Sixty-types remember all the big hits, forgetting that he also wrote the score to “Jonathan Livingstone Seagull,” wrote “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” for Barbra Streisand and starred in a version of “The Jazz Singer.” He’s in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and, according to Paul Simon, was once known as the Jewish Elvis Presley. Go figure.

The Gala Kennedy Center Honors performance will take place Dec. 4, co-produced by George Stevens Jr. and Michael Stevens, at the Opera House where the honorees will be saluted by performers, their peers, the powerful and the president. The Honors Gala will be broadcast on CBS Dec. 27 at 9 p.m.

[gallery ids="100400,113228,113187,113219,113212,113197,113205" nav="thumbs"]

Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington Holiday Party
•

The Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington (RAMW) hosted a holiday party on Nov. 28 at Watershed, which renowned restaurateurs Todd and Ellen Kassoff Gray opened last April in NoMa’s Hilton Garden Inn. The restaurant showcases the bounty of the Eastern Seaboard. The warm evening meant that guests could congregate on the outdoor patio to feast on abundant freshly shucked oysters. Watershed helps support a collective of East Coast fishermen as well as the Oyster Shell Alliance Program, which recycles oyster shells in the Chesapeake Bay for reforesting. Since 1920, RAMW has represented and promoted the foodservice industry in our area through education, government relations and socio-professional activities. [gallery ids="100418,113487,113541,113497,113533,113507,113525,113517" nav="thumbs"]

Classic Conversations with Kevin Kline
•

Actor Kevin Kline joined Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC) Artistic Director Michael Kahn at Sidney Harman Hall on Nov. 28 for the second installment of Classic Conversations, a series of discussions with classically-trained actors during STC’s 25th Anniversary Season. Kahn opened the program by noting that critic Frank Rich deemed Kline “the American Olivier.” Kline spoke of his training at Juilliard and being approached by Joseph Papp to play Richard III in Shakespeare in the Park, noting “I didn’t start small.” In response to Kahn’s query about what he liked in working with a director, he responded “fun.” Kahn said that his legendary reluctance to accept parts had earned him the nickname “Kevin Declined.” Both concurred that “great actors become great by doing great roles.”

Opera Camerata Presents Die Fledermaus
•

The Opera Camerata of Washington, D.C., brought an early holiday treat with the frothiest of operas under the patronage of Ambassador of Monaco and Mrs. Gilles Noghes on Nov. 29 at the Sulgrave Club. Following a cocktail reception, guests were seated in the ballroom which glittered in true Viennese splendor. Elizabeth Turchi as Rosalinda and José Sacin as Eisenstein led a stellar cast accompanied by Opera Camerata’s top orchestra and chorus. The behind the scenes shenanigans of Viennese society were hilariously described by narrator Stefan Lopatkiewicz who captivated his audience with such insights as “the icing was put on the strudel, so to speak.” [gallery ids="100419,113588,113527,113579,113570,113537,113562,113554,113547" nav="thumbs"]

3rd Annual Photo Competition
•

For our third year running, The Georgetowner’s annual photo competition has let us reach into the community and ask our readers for their most memorable scenes of the last year. Georgetown’s historic beauty is something often overlooked in the bustle of urban life—after a while you begin not to notice the gold-domed grandeur of the PNC Bank on Wisconsin and M (erected in 1814 as part of Riggs Bank by a group which included George Washington’s nephew), the Frank Schlesinger-designed apartments overlooking the waterfront, or even the beauty of Key Bridge, the oldest surviving bridge across the Potomac. And this doesn’t even touch upon our historic row houses, cobblestone streets, waterfront views of the Potomac, boathouses and parks.

Sometimes it takes a photograph to capture the essence of a time or place, and in Georgetown’s case, they are bridged tenuously between the tradition of the past and the promise of the future.

Many thanks to those who submitted this year. Of all the standout entries we received, the overarching theme seemed to focus on our neighborhood as a focal point for some of Washington’s most memorable landscapes and cityscape, and the overwhelming submissions that flowed beyond Georgetown and wandered around our city limits were impossible to ignore. Tom Ward’s photograph of the Vietnam Memorial, at right, was a subtle and moving portrait, echoing the souls of all those we lost so many years ago in the folding reflections of the granite walls within themselves.

As we look on from the newly completed Waterfront Park, past the Kennedy Center and into the city beyond, one thing remains in focus: we live in a beautiful place. Let’s not forget it.

About the winner:
‘Sunrise Over 34th Street,’ photo By Didi Cutler, winner of The Georgetowner’s 3rd Annual Photo Competition. Thanks to all who participated. For more photos, turn to page 16.
A 34th St. resident, Isabel “Didi” Cutler has spent many years living and traveling in the Middle East. Her photographic portraits and landscapes hang in embassies, museums and offices throughout the world, as well as in many private collections, including the White House. Her portraits include prominent statesmen, artists and authors, as well as a broad range of other individuals, ranging from royal families in their palaces to neighborhood children in intimate family surroundings. Cutler’s book, ‘Mysteries of the Desert,’ was published by Rizzoli in 2001. [gallery ids="100454,115438,115403,115430,115413,115422" nav="thumbs"]