Washington, D.C. — Like a lot else within the nation’s capital, the John F. Kennedy Middle for the Performing Arts is in a state of uncertainty. For 53 years, this huge efficiency complicated has served — with bipartisan grace and, at its finest, conspicuous American aptitude — to honor a single U.S. president. However in February the middle was appropriated by one other president who now additionally guidelines as chairman of a board of trustees, all of whom are his appointees.
The takeover resulted within the firing of the middle’s long-serving president, Deborah Rutter, one of many nation’s most spectacular arts leaders. Over the past decade, she expanded an already huge establishment’s choices. The middle’s new short-term president, Richard Grenell, a former ambassador to Germany, lacks arts administration expertise.
Within the meantime, the brand new directors warn that the Kennedy Middle is impoverished, that the power has turn into shoddy and that a few of its programming in poor health serves the American ultimate. Range and drag are out, which has led to the disinviting of, amongst others, the Homosexual Males’s Refrain of Washington, D.C., from acting on the premises. Celebrating Christmas, guarantees Grenell, may be very a lot in, as might be striving for profit-making programming. One suggestion is commercializing the middle to make the most of its actual property worth and prime location on the Potomac.
On a current afternoon I wandered the Kennedy Middle’s grand hallways resulting in an opera home (house of Washington Nationwide Opera), live performance corridor (house to the Nationwide Symphony) and the Eisenhower Theater (suited to drama and dance), all overseen by a super-sized bust of JFK. I visited the galleries and retailers and eating places, the Millennium Stage (the place a free chamber music efficiency was going down) and checked out a current addition, the Attain, a $250-million complicated of versatile venues, an funding the brand new administration bemoans.
It was a ravishing spring day, and the Kennedy Middle gave the impression to be well-tended however unusually quiet. Apart from a small crowd listening to members of the Nationwide Symphony carry out chamber music, I felt like I had the constructing virtually to myself. A clerk in one of many reward retailers was thrilled to lastly have a buyer. I used to be the one one within the galleries. Reveals nonetheless mirrored variety. Rainbow flag Kennedy Middle T-shirts remained on the market.
There have been cancellations in protest of the takeover — notably Rhiannon Giddens, the Broadway manufacturing of “Hamilton” and what was to have been the Washington premiere of Gregory Spears’ transferring opera “Fellow Travelers,” primarily based on the Lavender Scare, the Nineteen Fifties federal persecution of homosexual males and lesbians in authorities. However Mark Morris’ doubtlessly controversial new ballet, “Moon,” was having its world premiere that night as deliberate.
Morris could also be America’s main choreographer, however he additionally could be a fanciful dangerous boy of dance. Inform him he can’t do one thing and, I’ve been instructed, look out. It might be arduous to think about the present Kennedy Middle welcoming Morris’ method of meting out Christmas cheer. His good yuletime hit, “The Hard Nut,” primarily based on Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker,” has been delighting audiences of all ages for 3 many years, however it does occur to incorporate a comedic maid in drag.
When the Kennedy Middle final fall commissioned Morris to make an evening-length centerpiece for its huge “Earth to Space: Arts Breaking the Sky” competition, nothing extra was meant than to honor JFK’s initiative that led, in 1969, to Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin being the primary Earthlings to stroll on the moon. The competition is an exuberant instance of the sweeping occasions that Rutter created. It contains concert events, opera, dance, movie, talks, installations, reveals, interstellar musical journeys of 1 oddball type or one other, appearances by astronauts and space-specialist celebrities, to not point out each day screenings of a brand new movie, “The Moonwalkers,” that includes Tom Hanks.
All of this takes on new that means, particularly if we recall JFK’s 1962 speech at Rice College in Houston. In it he defended the enormity of the Apollo 11 mission’s expense by noting, “There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet,” and warned that “its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again.”
NASA is making ready for a moon touchdown once more in 2027. The temptation, this time, goes past scientific curiosity to colonization, mining uncommon parts and utilizing the moon as a waystation to Mars. The 2 most zealous area buffs on Earth loom massive in Washington, with Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk in a moon race with their respective rocket enterprises, Blue Origin and House X.
Enter Mark Morris. He had been cagey all alongside about what he had in thoughts, aside from to incorporate the moon touchdown and the Golden File, the disc that astronomer and media character Carl Sagan made for Voyager 1 and a pair of. Launched in 1977, these two NASA spacecraft had been the primary meant to depart our photo voltaic system. The recording contains sounds, voices and music of the Earth’s peoples, in hopes that it simply would possibly attain clever life someplace on the market.
Members of the Mark Morris Dance Group carry out the world premiere of “Moon” on April 4, 2025, on the Kennedy Middle Eisenhower Theater in Washington, D.C.
(ximena brunette / xmbphotography)
“Moon,” which is a collection of brief dances that lasts just below an hour, begins with an animated show of five-pointed stars in a semicircle on a display that served because the backdrop for the Eisenhower stage. The celebs slyly turn into the circumference of the U.S. presidential seal. However quite than resulting in outrage, a picture of JFK appeared beneath the seal, after which one of many moon. The viewers laughed after which warmly applauded.
Morris’ silvery moon was a spot of thriller and marvel. Musical selections had been agreeably eccentric. Past the Golden File’s greetings in lots of languages to aliens, Morris turned to gloriously schmaltzy swing, bluegrass and nation recordings from the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s. These included Al Bowlly’s “Roll Along, Prairie Moon,” Invoice Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” Bonnie Guitar’s “Dark Moon” and Hildegarde’s “Honey-Coloured Moon.” Pianist and organist Colin Fowler, joined by bassist Jordan Frazier, added their contributions from the pit. Just a few of György Ligeti’s startlingly unusual solo piano numbers from “Musica Ricercata” confirmed up. Dancers rolled by on wheeled stools like little area individuals to a few of Marcel Dupré’s eerie “24 Organ Inventions.”
With gorgeously impressionist lighting (by Mike Faba), intriguing outer area projections (by Wendall Okay. Harrington), elegant costumes (by Isaac Mizrahi) and little toy spacemen scattered about, the Morris “Moon” turned a luxuriant dreamlike escape from Washingtonian actuality. Most essential of all, his firm had by no means been higher, and the dancers themselves supplied the true fantasy. Otherworldly motion in some way matched the completely different music in ways in which appear rational however not needing to make sense. Motion, itself, was journey, round each flip an imaginative new shock.
To stroll right into a newly unsure Kennedy Middle can really feel fraught. However in his program word, Morris asks us to “observe and enjoy Moon and Space, without understanding a thing.” The genius of “Moon,” nonetheless, is to remind us that marvel might be across the least anticipated corners.
Can “Moon” remind NASA to go to the moon to marvel, to not plunder? Most likely not. However it will probably remind artists that if “Moon” issues, so nonetheless should a Kennedy Middle that nourishes and produces such work.
Kennedy Middle, please, earlier than it’s too late, pause, mirror and recharge. America wants you. And also you, in the event you resolve to grasp a factor or two, will want us.
