By Jacqueline Trescott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
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.
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.
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