Kennedy Center Looks to the Future for Its New Season

The robots are coming! As part of a major Japanese festival, cutting-edge humanoid robots will come to the Kennedy Center to show why they are art, engineering and fun.

But wait, don't bother -- they're here.

In announcing its 2007-08 season yesterday, the center trotted out a mechanized forerunner as a preview. The swaying Toyota-developed robot -- blinding white and blue-eared -- played "It's a Wonderful World" on trumpet to open the news conference, then backed off the Family Theater stage, leaving the vocal work to Kennedy Center President Michael M. Kaiser.

"In the Japan festival, we want to show work that is being done in Japan that is not shown here," Kaiser said. "In every season, we are trying to do things we haven't done before, to be more adventurous."

Taking center stage for two weeks in February will be "Japan! Culture + Hyperculture." An examination of contemporary Japanese culture, the programming will include a new musical conceived by director Amon Miyamoto, who has won over American audiences with his Broadway staging of Stephen Sondheim's "Pacific Overtures." For the center, he is creating "Boonah: The Musical," based on a fable about a frog, with music by "Dreamgirls" composer Henry Krieger. A world dance premiere by contemporary choreographer Jo Kanamori also is scheduled.

The festival menu will include the international debut of Genius Party, an extravaganza of anime talent. "Robotopia Rising," the exhibitions and lectures about robots, will run in the same Feb. 5-17 period.

While the Kennedy Center is concentrating on the new and futuristic, there will be perennial attractions as well in the center's programming.

Kaiser announced that the Bolshoi Ballet will be back every year for 10 years, beginning with the 2008-09 season. Last month the famed company sold out all seven of its Kennedy Center performances.

Next year's season will feature packaging innovations -- including 10 days devoted to seemingly every manifestation of a cappella singing the center could find -- and two programs will show an acclaimed singer's personal choices and a master playwright's insights.

Over the next 10 years, Barbara Cook will head up a series of cabaret performances of singers who interpret the Broadway songbook in "Barbara Cook's Spotlight." On her list for engagements are Tony Award winner Lillias White and Tony-nominated Judy Kuhn, Alice Ripley and Emily Skinner. Cook will perform Oct. 26 and will join Skinner and Ripley April 11, 2008.

In "August Wilson's 20th Century," the center will concentrate on the legacy of the Pulitzer-winning playwright through staged readings of his 10-play cycle, which reflects on the African American experience through each decade of the century.

Many actors who are identified with Wilson's material will appear at the center in March 2008, including the Tony-winning Viola Davis ("King Hedley II") and Tony nominees Phylicia Rashad ("Gem of the Ocean") and Rocky Carroll ("The Piano Lesson"). The plays will be done in chronological order for the first time.