Kennedy Center Looks to the Future for Its New Season

The a cappella festival is believed to be a first for a mainstream art house. In May 2008, the 10-day program will debut with the Men of the Deeps, a choir of coal miners from Nova Scotia, who will team with the Washington National Cathedral choirs. The wide-ranging performers will include Bobby McFerrin, the Manhattan Transfer, the U.S. Navy Sea Chanters and Ladysmith Black Mambazo, as well as Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, a women's group from Bulgaria, and Le Capilla Virreinal de la Nueva España, a Mexican ensemble.

In dance, the center is bringing together nine regional groups in a week of joint programs called "Ballet Across America." The companies will include Pacific Northwest Ballet, the Kansas City Ballet, the Boston Ballet, the Houston Ballet and the Washington Ballet, and their mixed repertory will appear in June 2008.

"Every year we are going to take an art form and see how it is being performed across the country. We might do chamber music next," Kaiser said. He is reviving "Proteges," a program of young dancers featuring students from the Bolshoi, the School of American Ballet, and returning students from the Royal Ballet and Paris Opera.

The striking Shen Wei Dance Arts will return next March as part of the contemporary dance series. For Shen Wei's performances, the audience will sit in the tier level of the Opera House and look down as the group creates calligraphy through dance.

In October, the Dana Tai Soon Burgess company, a Washington troupe, will premiere "Chino Latino." Ballet Hispanico will join with the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra and Arturo O'Farrill in a salute to Latin social dance Nov. 5.

The National Symphony Orchestra will open its season Sept. 16 with soprano Renee Fleming and will end June 29 with a salute to outgoing Music Director Leonard Slatkin, led by cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Guest conductors will include Ivan Fischer, Mark Elder, Hans Graf, Hugh Wolff and Lorin Maazel. The NSO pops concerts will include three evenings with singer Roberta Flack and a concert of music from Jerome Kern's "Show Boat," conducted by Marvin Hamlisch.

Because the Eisenhower Theater will be closed for renovations for more than a year, the theater schedule has only four bookings besides the Wilson work and Cook's cabaret series. The other offerings are Samuel Beckett's "Happy Days," featuring award-winning Irish actress Fiona Shaw, and, as part of its program to encourage new American plays and regional theater, Julie Marie Myatt's "Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter," from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The play, set for July, is about a wounded veteran returning from Iraq.

"Washington has a reputation for being conservative, but we have found that not to be true," Kaiser said.

More accessible will be the venerable "My Fair Lady," directed by Tony-winning Trevor Nunn; it arrives for almost one month in December. And in June 2008, the long-awaited Washington production on Disney's "Lion King" tour will set up shop for nine weeks.

Kaiser also announced yesterday that a new gift of $5 million over the next 10 years from the Charles E. Smith Family Foundation will support the Cook program and appearances by the regional dancers. An ongoing gift from Catherine B. Reynolds is underwriting the Wilson retrospective.