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The Kennedy Center Honors for 2006 have been announced:

Andrew Lloyd-Webber

Zubin Mehta

Dolly Parton

Smokey Robinson

Steven Spielberg

From the Washington Post, a quote from Dolly Parton:

"I am amazed. I see the old fans, with the blue hairs. And then I see the blue hairs with the spikes and piercing. They know I love them all," she says.
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What's really disheartening is that dancers seem to be honored less and less frequently. In the early days of the Kennedy Center Honors, dance was represented almost every year. But since the beginning of the new millennium, there have hardly been any:

1978 - George Balanchine, Fred Astaire

1979 - Martha Graham

1980 - Agnes de Mille

1981 - Jerome Robbins

1982 - Gene Kelly

1983 - Katherine Dunham

1984 -

1985 - Merce Cunningham

1986 - Antony Tudor

1987 - Alwin Nikolais

1988 - Alvin Ailey

1989 - Alexandra Danilova

1990 -

1991 - Nicholas Bros.

1992 - Paul Taylor, Ginger Rogers

1993 - Arthur Mitchell

1994 -

1995 - Jacques d'Amboise

1996 - Maria Tallchief

1997 - Edward Villella

1998 -

1999 - Judith Jamison

2000 - Mikhail Baryshnikov

2001 -

2002 - Chita Rivera

2003 -

2004 -

2005 - Suzanne Farrell

2006 -

It's a pity Fernando Bujones didn't get the award before his passing. (Nora Kaye, Tanaquil LeClercq, Melissa Hayden...)

Classical music still seems to be holding its own, but ballet is fading fast from the public imagination. Have we really run out of great American dancers?

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According to the Washington Post article,

The honorees are selected by the center's artistic committee, which includes Renee Fleming, Nathan Lane, Audra McDonald, Liam Neeson, Kevin Spacey and Dave Brubeck. The committee, along with previous honorees, made the decision with the center's board and George Stevens Jr., who created the Honors in 1978 with Nick Vanoff.

I don't see on the Kennedy Center website whether the honorees have to be alive to receive the award.

With that lineup, I'm surprised there wasn't an actor on the list, but not surprised that there were no dancers or choreographers (although with McDonald and Lane on the committee Tharp, Vernon, Reinking, Fosse, Prowse, and/or Vereen might have been.)

Patricia McBride? Cynthia Gregory? Peter Martins?

(Martin Scorcese? Samuel Ramey? Ned Rorem? They missed Robert Merrill.)

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sandik:

It's disheartening that there are no dancers or choreographers in the list

Sure is.

but I do think that all of them (well, possibly not Andrew L-W) have made significant contributions to American culture in their own fields.

Agreed -- but. Robinson and Parton, for example, are both perfectly fine choices, but in the same year? Mehta –well, all right, but why not a composer in preference to a conductor, or a composer honored alongside a conductor? Why no one from the world of theatre?

Spielberg, okay. (Unfortunately, the emphasis will probably be laid on the Important Statement pictures he’s been making recently instead of his actual good ones.)

It is really too bad about Bujones. A glaring omission, and now it's too late.

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Well, my head's spinning (and my stomach, too) at the selection of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Interesting, isn't it, that his honorific "Lord" has been eschewed by the Kennedy Center's copy writer! You don't have to be American, but I guess you can't be too foreign.

There is a 9-minute "Great Moments" video available on this page. I love the shot of Sidney Poitier near the end, where he takes Jacques d'Amboise's face between his two hands, then turns his own face upwards and mouths, "My mother. My father."

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Well, my head's spinning (and my stomach, too) at the selection of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Interesting, isn't it, that his honorific "Lord" has been eschewed by the Kennedy Center's copy writer! You don't have to be American, but I guess you can't be too foreign.
Elton John may have started a trend of disappointing selections, and, frankly, I didn't buy their explanation for Joan Sutherland, either.
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Do you suppose CBS has something to do with the dumbing down of the award? I don't know what sort of ratings their Kennedy Center telecast gets, but I wonder if the growing tendency towards "popular" entertainers isn't an attempt to increase viewership. If that's the case, we'll see more and more representatives from film, television and mass-marketed music, and artists who work in theaters, opera houses and concert halls will be increasingly marginalized.

As for the dance side of things, the awards thus far have definitely been New York-centric. To a large extent this is justified, but I wonder why so little has been done to acknowledge those who brought ballet to places like San Francisco, Boston, Seattle and Houston. I'm happy that Maria Tallchief and Edward Villella were honored, among other things, for their work in Chicago and Miami, but I doubt they would have received the award if they hadn't been stars with NYCB first.

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As for the dance side of things, the awards thus far have definitely been New York-centric. To a large extent this is justified, but I wonder why so little has been done to acknowledge those who brought ballet to places like San Francisco, Boston, Chicago and Houston. I'm happy that Maria Tallchief and Edward Villella were honored, among other things, for their work in Chicago and Miami, but I doubt they would have received the award if they hadn't been stars with NYCB first.

It does seem as if a criterion is being alive, at least at the time of the nomination.

The first Kennedy Center Honors were in 1978, which means they had seven years in which to honor Lew Christensen, the first American Apollo, and brothers Harold and William for their contributions in creating the oldest major ballet company in the US and its and affiliated school to the American West, as well as for their performing careers. Harold Christensen lived until 1989, and William Christensen in 2001. That's a lot of missed chances.

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I don't see on the Kennedy Center website whether the honorees have to be alive to receive the award.

With that lineup, I'm surprised there wasn't an actor on the list, but not surprised that there were no dancers or choreographers (although with McDonald and Lane on the committee Tharp, Vernon, Reinking, Fosse, Prowse, and/or Vereen might have been.)

Patricia McBride? Cynthia Gregory? Peter Martins?

(Martin Scorcese? Samuel Ramey? Ned Rorem? They missed Robert Merrill.)

You've got my vote for Samuel Ramey!

I don't know that the honorees have to be living, but it certainly seems that's the case. Which would explain why no Bill Robinson or Hermes Pan or Busby Berkeley.

To add to the list of missed opportunities there's Jose Limon and Gregory Hines.

I noticed, though, as I scrolled through the list of past honorees, that one of the lovely things about alphabetical order is the interesting connections it makes -- Mikhail Baryshnikov right next to Chuck Berry. Which, when I think about it, makes absolute sense.

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I don't know that the honorees have to be living, but it certainly seems that's the case.

The program has always had a sort of upscale 'This Is Your Life' ambiance -- it's part of the entertainment to have the honoree sitting in the balcony beaming while everyone on stage remembers him when.

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I don't know that the honorees have to be living, but it certainly seems that's the case.

The program has always had a sort of upscale 'This Is Your Life' ambiance -- it's part of the entertainment to have the honoree sitting in the balcony beaming while everyone on stage remembers him when.

Rather like Queen for a Day.

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