News & Politics

Michelle Kingston •

Honorees, distinguished guests, journalists and friends crowded inside the Benjamin Franklin room at the State Department on March 21 to congratulate the members of the U.S.-Afghan Women’s Council on the 10th anniversary of supporting the women of Afghanistan.

Founded in 2002 by President George W. Bush and Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, the council connects both U.S. and Afghan governments with the private sector, academia and non-governmental organizations to identify needs and to develop and implement initiatives to support Afghan women and girls. The council is based at Georgetown University.

“There is an Afghan proverb: A good year is determined by its spring. I think that is a worthy proverb to keep in mind, and indeed it is a call to action for us to be sure that the spring sets the pace for the kind of good year we hope to see in Afghanistan,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said. “Let there be no doubt that even as the U.S. role in Afghanistan changes during the next few years of transition, we will continue to stand with and work closely with Afghan women.”

“Some may wonder if these efforts and partnerships truly make a difference,” said Zala Ahmad, a student from rural Afghanistan who now studies at Brandeis University in Massachusetts thanks to the council. “I can tell you firsthand that they do.”

While toasting the council with red glasses of hibiscus tea, dining on endive salads and Atlantic cod, and treating tastebuds to the sweet dessert served, a passion fruit clafouti, guests listened to Clinton, former First Lady Laura Bush, John DeGioia, president of Georgetown University, Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer and several other speakers from Afghanistan involved with the council share stories and the astronomical differences in percentages of Afghan females now attending schools and even holding prominent positions.

“Girls make up about 40 percent of the nearly 8 million children going to school in Afghanistan today,” Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan Zalmai Rassoul said. “In 2000, there were no girls at that time.” He also noted that 30 percent of school teachers and 15 percent of university teachers are women. Today, 24 percent of doctors and medical workers across Afghanistan are women.

Even with these positive numbers, he said Afghan women continue to be innocent victims, but the council has helped give them their opportunity back.

“God created a couple,” said Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation of New York. “He did not create men first, women second. He created a couple at the same time. So, there is no way half of the couple can be inferior to the other half of the couple.”

After several rounds of applause credited to the amount of effort and success that has gone in to the council, both Clinton and Bush were presented awards for their dedication by Georgetown University. Clinton was given the Caring for Children Lifetime Achievement Award from the Center for Child and Human Development by DeGioia, who teased that Clinton has been fighting for the rights of women and children since she wrote her scholarly article in 1973 for the Harvard Educational Review. Bush received the Champion for Afghan Women Award from Verveer, who said Bush “led by example, mobilizing resources to ensure that Afghan women and girls gain skills, opportunities, and particularly the education that they were denied under the years of Taliban repression.”

When the luncheon was finished, Verveer said the program was over but the journey to continue fighting for the rights of Afghan women is not. “We hope that we will all continue to work together,” she said.

Georgetowner •

charties

Georgetowner •

CAGLCC Annual Business Awards Ceremony

April 20th, 2012 at 06:30 PM | Event Website

Celebrate the 22nd Anniversary among a group of local businesses and community leaders at its annual awards galas. The Chamber recognizes outstanding organizations and individuals that have contributed to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in the Metro D.C. area. Silent auction, cocktail reception, annual awards dinner and gala. The theme of this year’s ceremony is “A Salute to LGBT Excellence.”

Address:

Liaison Capitol Hill

415 New Jersey Ave, NW

Washington, D.C.

“Wine, Rhythm and Craft.” at Smithsonian Craft Show

April 20th, 2012 at 06:00 PM | $15 | austrpr@si.edu | Tel: 888-832-9554 | Event Website

Live Jazz, cash bar featuring wine and cheese. The Craft Show and sale is widely regarded as the country’s most prestigious juried show and sale of fine American craft.

Address:

The National Building Museum

401 F Street, NW.

Washington, DC 20001

Japanese Art and Culture Day at the Workhouse

April 21, 2012 at 12 PM | $5 for one film screening – $8 for both | Email: juliebooth@lortonarts.org | Call 703 584-2900 | Event Website

The Workhouse Arts Center presents free workshops, demonstrations, performances and talks featuring Japanese art, culture, music and food, and screening of japanese films.
12 PM – 4 PM: workshops, demonstrations, performances, talks?
4:30 PM – 9 PM: Japanese film festival double feature

Address:

Workhouse Arts Center

9601 Ox Road ?

Lorton, VA

Earth Day Brunch Cruise

April 22, 2012 at 10.30 AM | $64,90 per adult and $35,95 per child age 3-12 | Email jessica@lindarothpr.com | call 703 417-2701 | Event Website

New this year, Entertainment Cruises is partnering with the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) in honor of Earth Day. Guests aboard the Odyssey for this specialty Earth Day Brunch Cruise will enjoy a delicious buffet meal including mimosas, coffee and iced-tea while learning from the NAAEE about green energy, environmental initiatives and their upcoming conference. Guests will also have the opportunity to win a special environmentally-friendly giveaway!

Address:

Gangplank Marina.

600 Water St SW B

Washington, DC 20024

Family Party in Celebration of Shakespeare’s 448th Birthday

April 22, 2012 at 12 PM | Free | [Event Website](http://www.folger.edu/calendar.cfm?pageDate={d%20%272012-04-22%27})

Celebrate Shakespeare’s Birthday with birthday cake, music and dance!

Address:

Folger Shakespeare Library

201 East Capitol St. SE, Washington D.C.

Molasses Creek – Traditional Music

April 22, 2012 at 3 PM | admission $10-$20 | Contact theatreva@aol.com | 540 675-1253 | [Event Website](http://www.Theatre-Washington-VA.com/ for more information)

From Ocracoke Island, NC, the band is described as a “high-energy acoustic group with a captivating stage presence, elegant harmonies, blazing instrumentals, and a quirky sense of humor.” Award winners on “A Prairie Home Companion”, they have several recordings to their credit. Gary Mitchell, guitar and vocals; Dave Tweedie, fiddle and vocals; Marcy Brenner, mandolin, bass and vocals; Lou Castro, dobro, bass and vocals; Gerald Hampton, mandolin and bass.

Address:

Theatre at Little Washington

291 Gay Street

Washington, VA 22747

Arlington Philharmonic Spring Concert

April 22, 2012 at 3 PM | FREE (suggested $20 donation) | Email info@arlingtonphilharmonic.org | call 703 910-5161 | [Event Website](http://www.arlingtonphilharmonic.org/ for more information)

A symphonic dawn, an afternoon daydream, and an evening song . . . the Arlington Philharmonic, Arlington County’s professional symphony, will perform Haydn’s Symphony No. 6 (Le Matin), Debussy’s Prélude à “L’après-midi d’un faune,” and Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été.

Address:

Washington-Lee HS Auditorium, Entrance 5
?
1301 N. Stafford Street

Arlington, VA 2011?

Georgetown House Tour

April 28th, 2012 at 11:00 AM | $45 | Tel: (202) 338-1796 | [Event Website](http://www.georgetownhousetour.com/)

-Featuring 8-12 of Georgetown’s most beautiful homes and their impressive gardens

-Homes are arranged for easy walking at your own pace taken in the order you prefer

-Tickets include a tour booklet full of useful information including a map of the houses which will make it possible to set your own route

Address:

3240 O Street N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20007

Gary Tischler •

One of the more characteristic items found in the many obituaries offered up for Dick Clark, who died April 18 at age 82 was that his fellow high school seniors voted him “most likely to sell the Brooklyn Bridge,” according to the Washington Post.

That was a fair assessment, because during his life Dick Clark sold many things and played many roles and had many careers and owned many businesses and shows. The most important thing he sold—the thing with the most lasting value—was rock ‘n’ roll.

That was in his role as host of “American Bandstand,” a daily popular teenaged dance shoe emanating from Philadelphia with Clark hosting, and packs of more or less local kids dancing to the emerging pop music force that was rock and roll, a force that frightened parents and was embraced by their boomer baby kids in the 1950s.

Clark, by his demeanor, his looks—forever young—and style, actually spread the impact of rock ‘n’ roll music all over the country, including the hinterlands of small town America, at least that part which had television reception. Unlike Elvis—or Marlon Brando as a biker, for that matter—Clark was nonthreatening, and the kids on the show didn’t cut it as sullen rebels, but were clean cut, often wore ties, and the girls were pretty without being flamboyantly so.

Clark, in his 30-year tenure, proved to be as influential in spreading rock ‘n’ roll as the dreaded Elvis—the show featured kids grading the latest singles, as in “I gave it a nine cause you can dance to it,” then doing the latest dances like the Twist, the Watusi, the Chicken or the Hand Jive.”

I can vouch for this: in the 1950s, I lived in small town America where in the summers we would drag home after football practice and watch American Bandstand and hear everyone from Pat Boone and Fats Domino to the Everly Brothers or Buddy Holly (“That’ll Be the Day”) and I swear every guy on the team had a crush on Justine Correlli, the pretty blonde girl who became something of a star on the show.

Clark could sell the music even though he looked nothing like a rock-n-roller, although he was, as many dubbed him, “America’s oldest teenager.” He gained recognition, exposure and acceptance for the genre at a time when it was just beginning to surge into the mainstream of pop music. Clark pushed it along and expanded its popularity, the greatest promoter rock ‘n’ roll ever had.

He wasn’t a rock star, but he knew rock stars. He knew business, and he knew American pop culture better than anyone. He headed “American Bandstand” for 35 years from 1952 to 1987. Performers on the show included Simon and Garfunkel, Ike and Tina Turner, the great Motown acts, (before Soul Train), and even the eclectic David Byrne and the Talking Heads. Clark did not, as far as we know, dance on the show, but he didn’t need to.

At heart, he was a promoter, a salesman, pursuing the great American business model. “American Bandstand” was the thing he turned into an institution, a legend and something of lasting import. But there’s more — America is full of second and third acts — Clark, after all the Grammy Award Shows, the Emmy Shows, the theater and businesses and television appearances, became a legend all over again. Since 1972, Dick Clark Productions produced “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” on ABC, with Clark himself presiding over the lowering of the ball in Times Square every year until a stroke in 2004 sidelined him.

Clark did not idealize or even exaggerate his impact, especially “American Bandstand.” “I played the music, the kids danced and America watched,” he said.

All of that happened. And America has never quite been the same since.

Gary Tischler •

Pay attention, kids. The Chairman of the Board, Old Blue Eyes, the Voice is back and in the house.

The house being the Eisenhower Theater at the Kennedy Center, where Frank Sinatra’s music and voice provide a kind of electric muse, a poetic kick in the pants, to the dancers — couples coming together, falling apart and twisting and flying through the air — in “Come Fly Away,” Twyla Tharp’s dance homage and expression of the Sinatra musical essence and persona.

“Come Fly Away” — where a set of four couples never going far from the stage set of the kind of bar where you drown your sorrows and dance to the tune of your troubles, or fly like ecstatic birds to the tune of romance — has Sinatra in full voice, ever present, his great voice and songs bathing the performers with a knowing air.

Tharp, America’s greatest living choreographer, has always had a gift for blending the pop with dance, a fascination not held alone by her but also Mikhail Barishnikov, who worked with her on her first Sinatra effort. “Come Fly Away,”, rooted in “Sinatra Suite” and the earlier “Nine Sinatra,” is leaner, and physically meaner and tougher than the Broadway original. It runs at 80 minutes with no intermission and is a gift if you still can’t get Sinatra’s combination of brass and sass, hitched to rueful romance, out of your head. Some of Sinatra’s finest songs are here—and it’s saying a lot given that he recorded literally thousands of songs.

The hitch, the hook, here is love, all kinds of love, including tough love with a background provided by the genuine article of Sinatra’s recorded love, and a full orchestra, much of it brass, the piano, the mournful sax, the sweet muted horn you haven’t heard very often. The couples in question are all kinds of American lovers—the stormy weather , battling, bruising love of Hank (Anthony Burrell) and flaming-haired Kate (Ashley Blair Fitzgerald), the uneven infuation-style course of Babe (Meredith Miles) and Sid (Stephen Hannah), the All-American sweets of Betsy and Marty (Amy Ruggiero and Ron Todorowski), not to mention the high-flying efforts of Chano (Mattahew Stockwell Dibble) to find love.

Dancing to songs as varied as “Luck Be a Lady,” “Let’s Fall in Love,” the stained-napkin boozy, “Here’s to the Losers,” “One for My Baby,” the defiant “My Way,” “That’s Life” and the exuberant “New York, New York.” In the mode of Sinatra-in-past-midnight-trenchcoat-alone with “Saturday Night is the Loneliest Night of the Week, the couples and the ensemble do something awesome. They embody the music, a lot of Sinatra himself, and a little and a lot of all of us. They do it with tremendous gifts of physicality, grace, buoyancy and dazzling acrobatics. They toss each other around like muscular confetti, they meet, they pounce and they battle.

This is also, it should be said, sexy stuff, as love less idealized, the I-love-you-I-hate-you brand expressed in turns that escape one partner and land with another. This is hot stuff. All the couples on stage make this dancing a full-contact body bouncing effort: so much so that it’s a wonder nobody gets engaged during the course of the show. Or divorced.

Dibble can startle you with his high-flying leaps. Tudorowski carries with him a confidence that is equal parts funny and romantic. Miles turns every male dancer on stages to mush with her languid, red-dress moves.

But it’s the romance of Kate and Hank that carry the show and set the pace: theirs is almost a Frank-and-Ava affair. Every time they hook up, mash against each other, you feel the heat emanating from the sleek, slick, muscled moves of Burrell and Fitzgerald’s sassy, defiant attempts to escape and inability to leave, her red mane flying.

In fact, flight in all its definitions is at work here. All the boys and girls, at some point, manage to fly, to appear headed somewhere. They, if not away, still fly, fancy free and all.

Robert Devaney •

Before its April 22 Sunday night cable debut, the cast of HBO’s comedy series, “Veep,” checked into Washington April 11 at the United States Institute of Peace for red-carpet poses and interviews along with a reception and preview of the first episode.

Actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus, best know for “Seinfeld,” stars as Vice President Selina Meyer with her office more or less in its own bubble, with the president never shown on screen, and with Washington seen as much as a popularity contest as high school. At the preview, Louis-Dreyfus and a few of her co-stars said that they were happy being actors and did not envy the lives of politicians. Nevertheless, the D.C.-Hollywood connection continues in film, in lobbying efforts and with the increasingly exclusive White House Correspondents Association Dinner April 28. And, while Louis-Dreyfus talked to several politicians in her research for the role, but not Sarah Palin, the subject of an earlier HBO political show. [gallery ids="100750,122249,122225,122239,122235" nav="thumbs"]

Jeff Malet •

Shakespeare’s Birthday Open House at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. took place on Sunday April 22, 2012. Young and old alike were on hand to enjoy jugglers & jesters, music, song & dance, and stage combat workshops. It was also the one day of the year when the Folger reading rooms would be open to all. The highlight of the day was a cake-cutting ceremony in honor of Shakespeare’s birthday presided over by Queen Elizabeth I.

View our photos of the event by clicking on the icons below. [gallery ids="100752,122355,122346,122338,122331,122323,122314,122305,122297,122289,122373,122280,122380,122270,122387,122261,122393,122364" nav="thumbs"]

Jeff Malet •

Rain poured down on the Earth Day Celebration on Sunday April 22 on the Washington Mall, but that did not dampen the spirits of those who attended. View our pictures from the weekend which featured a sculpture of the Earth made from recycled products by renowned sculpture Tom Tsuchiya, a rally from the group iMatter, and a concert headlined by rock group Cheap Trick.

Atlas Recycled is a 7-foot-tall sculpture by Tom Tsuchiya depicting the mythical Greek titan Atlas bearing the earth on his shoulders doubles as a recycling receptacle for aluminum cans and plastic bottles. In addition to being a recycling aid, Altas itself was made primarily from reused materials. Pieces of 14 used atlases and road maps cover the entire surface of the sculpture. Most of the rigid foam, polymer and steel that form the structure were reused from the creation of some of the artist’s previous sculptures.

iMatter, which marched on the Mall in the rain on Sunday, is a campaign of Kids vs Global Warming, committed to creating opportunities for the voices of youth to be heard on the climate crisis issue. Five 16-17 year old plaintiffs have sued the US government for jeopardizing their future by failing to address climate change. The government has a legal responsibility to protect the atmosphere as a public trust, for all generations. Youth from the iMatter network across the country have taken legal action to demand that the courts recognize the atmosphere as a commons that needs to be protected.

View our photos by clicking on the photo icons below. [gallery ids="100753,122480,122488,122496,122504,122512,122520,122528,122537,122544,122552,122560,122568,122574,122472,122464,122456,122610,122381,122603,122391,122597,122398,122592,122408,122416,122424,122432,122440,122448,122582" nav="thumbs"]

Robert Devaney •

The Washington Nationals won their home opener, 3-2, in the 10th inning with Ryan Zimmerman, face of the franchise, running to home and getting out of a jam with visiting team, the Cincinnati Reds, thanks to a wild pitch. Before the game, the Nationals put on a patriotic show with Army veteran, actor and “Dancing with the Stars” champion J.R. Martinez, who threw out the ceremonial first pitch. Several VIPs, such as Wolf Blitzer, Charlie Brotman and Jim Kimsey as well as members of the Lerner family, watched the ceremonies from the field. With a sell-out crowd of 40,907 and their inaugural home win this season, the Nationals are in first place in the National League East. [gallery ids="100732,121374,121321,121368,121331,121363,121340,121357,121349" nav="thumbs"]