When the sculptor Joel Shapiro created Blue, the piece that stands around the back of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, looking out over the Potomac River in Washington, he wanted to tap into a number of elements. The giant matchstick figure denotes movement and energy, risk and possibility. As Shapiro himself has said, it is supposed to reconfigure depending on how you look at it.
WASHINGTON, DC - On Saturday, November 22, protestors expanded and crunched their bodies, arms rising and falling with flicked wrists, as they marched in front of the Kennedy Center with stoic expressions. Passersby would be excused for mistaking it for an official performance, but the show outside the nation's art center was actually a " dance protest " organized in response to President Trump's rising authoritarianism.
Leaving the Kennedy Center is a possible scenario after a collapse in box office revenue and shattered donor confidence in the wake of Trump's takeover, said Zambello. It is our desire to perform in our home at the Kennedy Center, she said. But if we cannot raise enough money, or sell enough tickets in there, we have to consider other options. The two things that support a company financially, because of the takeover, have been severely compromised, she said.
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has fired another staffer: Kevin Struthers, a senior director of music programming who had been at the D.C. arts institution for 30 years. Struthers confirmed his termination to NPR on Thursday. His dismissal is the latest upset in a line of firings and resignations at the Kennedy Center since President Trump became its chair in February and appointed Richard Grennell its new president.
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