Kennedy, John F, Center for the Performing Arts

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      The Choreographer Chris Gattelli Sends Love Letters to His Dance Heroes

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      The dance humor in Christopher Gattelli’s shows, like “Schmigadoon!” and “Death Becomes Her,” is underpinned by affection for musical theater and its excesses.If Christopher Gattelli’s choreography looks familiar, that’s probably the point. A veteran of more than 20 Broadway shows and a devotee of movie musicals, he has an encyclopedic dance brain, a catalog of musical theater references he deploys throughout his work onstage and onscreen. Homage is his calling card.And that makes him a very clever satirist. His two current projects — the stage adaptation of the television show “Schmigadoon!,” in the Broadway Center Stage series at the Kennedy Center in Washington through Sunday; and Broadway’s “Death Becomes Her,” at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater — both feature wickedly detailed sendups of “musical theater dance.”For Gattelli, 52, those scare quotes might as well be hugs. Barbed as his dance humor can be, it’s underpinned by his affection for the genre, in spite and because of its excesses and quirks.“It’s easy to get snarky when you’re spoofing something you’re so familiar with,” he said in an interview. “It’s easy to get all the digs in. But I’m truly writing love letters to all of my dance heroes.”In his choreography for “Schmigadoon!” on AppleTV+, he all but addressed those letters by name. For the show’s first season — which followed a 21st-century couple stranded in a world where every day is a Golden Age musical — Gattelli channeled the knee-slapping, heel-clicking ebullience of the choreographers Agnes de Mille and Michael Kidd. For the second season, set in the grittier environs of “Schmicago,” he brought in the pigeon-toed slinkiness of Bob Fosse and the splayed-fingers jazz of Michael Bennett.A scene from “Schmigadoon!” at the Kennedy Center.Matthew Murphy and Evan ZimmermanWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Schmigadoon!’ Review: An Affectionate Golden Age Schpoof

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      The Apple TV+ series comes to the stage of the Kennedy Center with its snark and affection for classic Broadway musicals intact.Rejoice, ye musical nerds! On the stage of the Eisenhower Theater, off the Hall of States at the Kennedy Center, between the Watergate complex and the Lincoln Memorial, at the heart of America’s temple to high-minded midcentury cultural propriety, your disreputable art form, with its salty predilections and disruptive mores, is on loving display in “Schmigadoon!”But maybe that’s overselling what is essentially a dandy little spoof of some tuners.You may recall that “Schmigadoon!” was an Apple TV+ series about a contemporary couple who, experiencing relationship problems, find themselves trapped in a world of love-insisting musicals. During its first season, in 2021, that world was highly reminiscent of Broadway shows of the 1940s and ’50s like “The Music Man,” “Carousel” and “Oklahoma!” but with bits of “The Sound of Music,” “Brigadoon” and “Kiss Me, Kate” tossed in. In the second season, the scene shifted to “Schmicago” and musicals of the ’70s. (An unproduced third season would have taken the couple “Into the Schmoods.”)The show being offered through Sunday by the Kennedy Center’s musical theater initiative, called Broadway Center Stage, is essentially the first season’s six-episode arc boiled down to two acts by its author, Cinco Paul. If you loved the television show, you probably know every note. If not, you probably don’t want to.I say that as someone whose feelings run in the middle. Neither onscreen nor onstage was I ever very interested in the on-the-outs couple, Josh and Melissa, for the simple reason that as characters they are skeletally thin. He’s the repressed, flat-affect guy; she’s in touch with her ambivalence to the point of annoyance. Though very smartly and appealingly performed here, by Alex Brightman and especially Sara Chase, neither would have lasted two scenes as protagonists of any of the musicals “Schmigadoon” models itself on.But, oh, those musicals! They are classics for a reason, whether for pure delight or complex feeling, and never as normative as they appear on the surface. “Oklahoma!” asks us to accept the inevitable harshness of life but not buckle under it; “Carousel” questions the possibility of redemption. “The Music Man” suggests that, in River City as elsewhere, even the truest love is a bit of a scam.Sara Chase and Alex Brightman, both seated, as a couple trapped in a world of love-insisting musicals, with McKenzie Kurtz, center, as one of those musical theater archetypes, a variant on Ado Annie from “Oklahoma!”Matthew Murphy and Evan ZimmermanWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At the Kennedy Center, a Send-Off to Biden and Questions About the Future

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      A bipartisan crowd honored Francis Ford Coppola, the Grateful Dead, Bonnie Raitt, Arturo Sandoval and the Apollo Theater. Some wondered if Donald J. Trump would attend next year.The arrival of the president to the center box is typically a pro forma affair each year at the Kennedy Center Honors. But President Biden’s arrival on Sunday night carried the tinge of a Washington on the verge of change.President-elect Donald J. Trump did not attend any of the honors events during his first term, in a sharp break with tradition. So the question of whether Sunday night might be the last time the commander in chief attends for the next four years was front and center as celebrities, artists and officials gathered to pay tribute to the arts.“I was talking to people backstage, and they’re going to try to get as many of these Honors in place now before the inauguration,” David Letterman joked as the audience roared with laughter.This year the center honored the filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, the beloved rock band the Grateful Dead, the Cuban American jazz trumpeter and composer Arturo Sandoval, the singer and songwriter Bonnie Raitt and the landmark Apollo Theater, in Harlem.Queen Latifah, hosting the celebration, said, “We find hope in heartache and hard times, and now more than ever, we need artists to help us uncover our shared truths, one story, one rhythm, one lyric at a time.”Bonnie CashThe host, Queen Latifah, told the crowd that artists “find hope in heartache and hard times, and now more than ever, we need artists to help us uncover our shared truths, one story, one rhythm, one lyric at a time.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Kennedy Center’s Chairman Won’t Depart After All

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      As the nation’s capital prepares for a second Trump administration, the performing arts center announced that its chairman would not step down in January as planned.The White House was not the only Washington institution planning to welcome new leadership in January. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts had announced that its longtime board chairman, David M. Rubenstein, would step down in January and had appointed a search committee to find a successor.But last month, shortly after the presidential election, the Kennedy Center announced that Mr. Rubenstein, a private equity titan who has led its board of 14 years, would stay on in the position until September 2026.The decision ensures continuity at a moment when the Kennedy Center, like much of Washington, is preparing for a second Trump administration. (On Sunday, President Biden is expected to attend the Kennedy Center Honors as it celebrates Francis Ford Coppola, the Grateful Dead, Bonnie Raitt and Arturo Sandoval; President-elect Donald J. Trump did not attend the ceremonies during his first term.) But it also raises questions about why the center failed to find a new chair.Deborah F. Rutter, the center’s president, said that on Nov. 15 the board’s search committee decided to keep Mr. Rubenstein on in part because the center is in the quiet phase of an endowment campaign, making a leadership transition “really tough.”“We looked at the needs of the Kennedy Center in a variety of different ways moving forward,” she said in an interview. “It is important for us to have somebody who knows the center and who knows and can play the leadership role that we need.”Mr. Rubenstein, a co-founder and co-chairman of the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm, has given the center $111 million over the years. He was initially appointed by former President George W. Bush. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      National Symphony Orchestra Players Reach Deal After Brief Strike

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      The musicians won a raise of about 8 percent over two years after a short work stoppage, the Washington ensemble’s first in 46 years.The musicians of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington reached a deal with management for a new labor contract on Friday after a tense, short-lived strike threatened to disrupt the season.Under the agreement, the players will receive a raise of 4 percent this season and another 4 percent increase in the 2025-26 season. They had previously rejected an offer of a 13 percent raise over four years.In an escalation after months of labor talks, the musicians walked off the job on Friday for the first time since 1978. They picketed in red shirts outside the Kennedy Center, which oversees the ensemble, holding signs that said, “No pay, no play!” The strike lasted from about 11 a.m. until 2:30 p.m.After the strike began, the National Symphony Orchestra’s managers said they would cancel the opening gala, a major fund-raising event scheduled for Saturday. But they reversed course once the deal was reached, saying the gala would go forward.Edgardo Malaga Jr., the president of the players’ union, Local 161-710 of the American Federation of Musicians, said the players were relieved by the agreement.“The musicians are very happy,” he said. “We felt we were successful. We’ve got some good gains here that we can be proud of.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Creators of ‘Grounded’ Discuss Writing for the Met Opera

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      Allow the creators of opera some grace.Composers, librettists and their colleagues put years of work into something that, if they are lucky, gets a workshop performance or two before arriving onstage. If there is a revival — never a given in opera — they have an opportunity to make revisions.This process can be brutal for artists. And it’s not the usual one for the composer Jeanine Tesori and the playwright George Brant, the creators of “Grounded,” which opens the Metropolitan Opera’s season on Sept. 23.Tesori was written operas before, but she and Brant are more often animals of the traditional theater and the Broadway musical, environments where constant revisions responding to workshops, rehearsals and preview performances are the norm. Operas are also revised until the last possible moment, but they are never given the luxurious feedback that creators get in theater.“In the theatrical space, the audience is part of the process,” said Tesori, the Tony Award-winning composer of the shows “Kimberly Akimbo,” “Fun Home” and “Caroline, or Change.” She learned from George C. Wolfe, the decorated playwright and director, “that the audience is your final scene partner.”“I wish I were one of those artists who really knows what they have, but I just don’t,” she said. “So, I feel like I’m still getting to know what ‘Grounded’ is.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kennedy Center Honorees Include Francis Ford Coppola and the Apollo

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      The renowned Harlem theater will be the first institution to receive the honor. Artists being recognized are Bonnie Raitt, Arturo Sandoval and the Grateful Dead.When Bonnie Raitt heard she had been chosen as a Kennedy Center honoree, she kept asking her manager: Are they sure?Raitt, whose song “Just Like That …” beat out higher-charting pop acts last year to win the Grammy for song of the year, said the honor was a surprise because after years of recognition mostly confined to blues and Americana spaces, she did not consider herself a mainstream artist.“I don’t live by the validation of either commercial success or getting awards,” Raitt, 74, said. “But because this is such an esteemed weekend and event and process, I don’t think there will ever be anything that I receive that is as important.”“I don’t think there will ever be anything that I receive that is as important,” Bonnie Raitt said of the Kennedy Center Honors.Peter Fisher for The New York TimesRaitt will receive a lifetime artistic achievement award at the 47th Kennedy Center Honors on Dec. 8 along with the filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, the beloved rock band the Grateful Dead, the Cuban American jazz trumpeter and composer Arturo Sandoval and the Harlem landmark the Apollo Theater.The Kennedy Center Honors will be broadcast on Dec. 23 by CBS and streamed on Paramount Plus.In the past, entities such as “Sesame Street” and “Hamilton,” have been honored, but the Apollo will be the first institution to be recognized. The theater is renowned for its history as a debut venue for many Black performers at its famed amateur nights, including Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kevin Hart Receives the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor

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      The prolific comic was honored at the Kennedy Center for a 25-year career that has included movies, TV series and many live events.The Kennedy Center honored the comedian, who said he “fell in love with the idea of comedy” as something he could do for the rest of his life.Paul Morigi/Getty ImagesKevin Hart stepped into the spotlight on Sunday night with his usual swagger to accept the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, occupying a stage lit up with his signature pyrotechnics.“Can I pee?” Mr. Hart said after a heartfelt tribute from his friend the comedian Dave Chappelle, before waddling offstage at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. He then reappeared to accept a bust of Mark Twain from David M. Rubenstein, the retiring chairman of the Kennedy Center.Mr. Hart, 44, is the 25th comic to receive the prize from the Kennedy Center, an honor given annually to the greatest humorists in American comedy. Mr. Hart was joined by his wife and four children, and grinned broadly even as he teared up at bitingly funny roasts and emotional tributes from friends and colleagues in the industry.“I played arenas with Chris Rock, and I would never play an arena before I saw you do it,” Mr. Chappelle said, crediting Mr. Hart with changing the business of stand-up comedy after a career selling out arena tours and even a football stadium in his hometown, Philadelphia. “You made me dream bigger, and you’re younger than me — it’s humiliating.”Over a roughly 25-year career — it was noted that he had been doing comedy since the inception of the Mark Twain Prize in the late 1990s — Mr. Hart has sold millions of tickets. He has built a loyal fan base through movies, TV series and many live events — some enhanced by fireworks — including eight comedy specials on relatable narratives, physical comedy and goofy re-enactments. But even when he rags on the cast of characters who file in and out of his life, he is usually the punchline of his own jokes.His peers also lauded him on Sunday for his work ethic, which includes appearing and casting friends in a slate of Hollywood movies, like the “Jumanji” sequels, dramedies such as “Fatherhood” and “Night School,” and a number of comedic action films.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More