A nearly packed house in the Kennedy Center’s concert hall greeted the winners of this year’s Mayor’s Arts Awards last night. In its 24th year, the award was created to celebrate the “indelible contributions to our cultural community by promoting artistic excellence and elevating the stature of our Nation’s Capitol.” The finalist list largely features long-time D.C. institutions and arts educators in theater, dance, music, and the visual arts, awarding accomplishments such as innovation and dedicated service to the arts.
The evening started with The Core, a wild performance featuring a slew of ethnic dancing; each troupe paraded on stage one after the other, showing off their Asian, African, and Irish moves to the same drum chorus. It was It’s A Small World on the best kind of crack, providing an energetic start to the evening. Mayor Adrian Fenty made his appearance, recommitting to arts funding in the city’s budget because art is “essential to a city’s development,” and noting that this year every one of the D.C. public schools has some kind of arts funding for the first time, promising to expand it. (Not to be outdone, award winner Andy Shallal, owner of Busboys and Poets, urged the mayor in his acceptance speech that now more than ever is the time to double arts funding, because it “creates an economic surge.”)
The audience was graced with a number of performances by local acts, including a live painting session by Rachel and Rebecca Crouch, a lovely dance performance by The Washington Ballet, an adorable piano/violin duet by students from the Levine School of Music, and the night’s only low point, a rather dreadful session from the Washington Improv Theater. Popular go-go band Mambo Sauce revved up the audience in both the opener with their “Welcome to D.C.” anthem, as well as a crowd-pleasing closing act. Though we were supposed to be treated to a “special guest,” the audience was left saying “Raheem who?” after he didn’t show and was replaced by two of the night’s presenters: Marcus Johnson, whose jazz records are all over the Billboard charts these days, and Dr. Billy Taylor, Artistic Director for Jazz at the Kennedy Center and recipient of a Grammy Award, two Peabody Awards, the National Medal of the Arts, 23 honorary degrees, and an enviable grab bag of many more. It was the giant cherry on top of a very sweet evening of artistic delight.
This year’s winners are listed after the jump. Next year, remember that the Mayor’s Arts Awards are free and open to the public, so there’s no reason not to head down and get energized by some fantasic local talent.
