Kennedy Center Honors Totally Explained

Everything about The Kennedy Center Honors totally explained

The Kennedy Center Honors is an annual honor given to artists in the performing arts. The Honors ceremony is one of the highlights in the cultural life of the United States. The Honors was the brainchild of George Stevens, Jr. (who remains involved), and he and his partner, the late Nick Vanoff, put together the first event in 1978. Since then, the Honors have been presented annually in Washington, D.C., during gala weekend-long events which culminate in a performance for—and honoring—the Honorees at the Kennedy Center Opera House.

Selection process

Each year the Kennedy Center's national artists committee and past honorees (such as Carol Burnett and Bill Cosby) present recommendations for proposed Honorees to the Board of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The Honors recognize a lifetime of contributions to American culture through the performing arts, whether in dance, music, theater, opera, motion pictures or television. On six occasions the five-person list has been expanded where a creative or artistic team or couple was selected, as was the case in two instances in 1991, where both the Nicholas Brothers and Comden and Green were jointly honored, bringing that year's list to seven. To date, including 2007's honorees, only 69 Kennedy Center Honorees are still living.
The announcement is made in the Fall, with the ceremony held over a weekend in early December. The gala performance is broadcast on television between Christmas and the New Year. The 2007 honorees were announced on September 11, 2007, and the event was aired on December 26 2007 by CBS

The ceremony

The weekend-long ceremony consists of lunch, dinner, reception, and a performance introducing and honoring the new Honorees. The lunch is on Saturday at the Kennedy Center, with a welcoming speech by the President of the Board of Trustees. At that evening's reception and dinner at the State Department, presided over by the Secretary of State, the year's Honorees are introduced. On Sunday, there's an early evening White House reception with the President of the United States, who will then hang a specially designed ribboned award around their necks.
The performance takes place Sunday evening at the Opera House in the Kennedy Center; the Honorees (wearing their medals) and guests sitting in the front of the Box Tier, a few seats away from the President and the First Family. The Honorees don't appear on stage nor do they speak to the general audience. The show consists of events from the recipients' lives, presented documentary style in film and live onstage, with the complete list of guest performers kept secret until the show is in progress. George Stevens, Jr. said: "Our tradition of surprises and surprise guests is particularly special..."
The 2007 ceremony and honors presentation was held December 1 and 2, 2007 during a gala weekend in Washington. The two-hour event was televised December 26, 2007 on CBS.

Recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors

There have been 157 recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors:

1978 — Marian Anderson, Fred Astaire, George Balanchine, Richard Rodgers, and Arthur Rubinstein
1979 — Aaron Copland, Ella Fitzgerald, Henry Fonda, Martha Graham, and Tennessee Williams
1980 — Leonard Bernstein, James Cagney, Agnes de Mille, Lynn Fontanne, and Leontyne Price
1981 — Count Basie, Cary Grant, Helen Hayes, Jerome Robbins, and Rudolf Serkin
1982 — George Abbott, Lillian Gish, Benny Goodman, Gene Kelly, and Eugene Ormandy
1983 — Katherine Dunham, Elia Kazan, Frank Sinatra, James Stewart, and Virgil Thomson
1984 — Lena Horne, Danny Kaye, Gian Carlo Menotti, Arthur Miller, and Isaac Stern
1985 — Merce Cunningham, Irene Dunne, Bob Hope, Lerner and Loewe, and Beverly Sills
1986 — Lucille Ball, Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, Yehudi Menuhin, Antony Tudor, and Ray Charles
1987 — Perry Como, Bette Davis, Sammy Davis Jr, Nathan Milstein, and Alwin Nikolais
1988 — Alvin Ailey, George Burns, Myrna Loy, Alexander Schneider, and Roger L. Stevens
1989 — Harry Belafonte, Claudette Colbert, Alexandra Danilova, Mary Martin, and William Schuman
1990 — Dizzy Gillespie, Katharine Hepburn, Risë Stevens, Jule Styne, and Billy Wilder
1991 — Roy Acuff, Comden and Green, Fayard and Harold Nicholas, Gregory Peck, and Robert Shaw
1992 — Lionel Hampton, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Ginger Rogers, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Paul Taylor
1993 — Johnny Carson, Arthur Mitchell, Sir Georg Solti, Stephen Sondheim, and Marion Williams
1994 — Kirk Douglas, Aretha Franklin, Morton Gould, Harold Prince, and Pete Seeger
1995 — Jacques d'Amboise, Marilyn Horne, B.B. King, Sidney Poitier, and Neil Simon
1996 — Edward Albee, Benny Carter, Johnny Cash, Jack Lemmon, and Maria Tallchief
1997 — Lauren Bacall, Bob Dylan, Charlton Heston, Jessye Norman, and Edward Villella
1998 — Bill Cosby, Fred Ebb & John Kander, Willie Nelson, André Previn, and Shirley Temple Black
1999 — Victor Borge, Sean Connery, Judith Jamison, Jason Robards, and Stevie Wonder
2000 — Mikhail Baryshnikov, Chuck Berry, Plácido Domingo, Clint Eastwood, and Angela Lansbury
2001 — Julie Andrews, Van Cliburn, Quincy Jones, Jack Nicholson, and Luciano Pavarotti
2002 — James Earl Jones, James Levine, Chita Rivera, Paul Simon, and Elizabeth Taylor
2003 — James Brown, Carol Burnett, Loretta Lynn, Mike Nichols, and Itzhak Perlman
2004 — Warren Beatty, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Elton John, Joan Sutherland, and John Williams
2005 — Tony Bennett, Suzanne Farrell, Julie Harris, Robert Redford, and Tina Turner
2006 — Zubin Mehta, Dolly Parton, Smokey Robinson, Steven Spielberg, and Andrew Lloyd Webber
2007 — Leon Fleisher, Steve Martin, Diana Ross, Martin Scorsese and Brian Wilson

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