In its acclaimed 50-year history, the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington, DC has hosted 28 international festivals to connect audiences to cultures throughout the world.
This spring, the Center hosts RiverRun, a celebration of the world’s rivers through music, dance, theater, film, and visual art. RiverRun also launches a planned decade of Kennedy Center biennial festivals exploring the connection between art, culture and the environment.
Roberto C. Fabelo Hung, Spiral. Metal covered with UV impressions and resin, symbolizing the waves of river headwaters. ©2023 Roberto C. Fabelo Hung. Courtesy of The Kennedy Center
Kennedy Center President Deborah F. Rutter explains RiverRun’s cultural, historical, and environmental significance:
“RiverRun begins a new chapter for our international festivals, one in which we ask not only what role art plays in changing the world through culture, but also the role it plays in understanding and changing our environment….RiverRun will be a celebration of how water — and art — impacts us all, and the impact we can make for future generations.”
From now until Earth Day (April 22), the stages, grand halls, and terraces of the Kennedy Center and the studios and green spaces of its REACH complex will be abuzz with programs showcasing hundreds of extraordinary talents from around the globe. The eclectic programming includes a jazz concert paying tribute to the Mississippi River’s influence on Louis Armstrong, a classical Indian dance honoring the Ganges, and a multi-media concert featuring NASA and National Geographic images of rivers and climate change.
Raiz Campos, Portraits of Wisdom, ©2023 Raiz Campos. Courtesy of The Kennedy Center.
Visual art installations display works by some of the world’s most renowned artists.
Raiz Campos, a legendary Brazilian graffiti artist, uses graffiti techniques to paint Amazonian themes on mats woven from natural fibers by indigenous tribes. His Portraits of Wisdom (above) are a tribute to the importance of the Amazon’s flora and fauna and to the efforts of native people to protect the forest and its biodiversity. Pirarucu, which he created especially for the festival, is a life-sized depiction of the pirarucu, one of the world’s largest freshwater fish. (Pirarucu can grow up to 10-15 feet in length and weigh 500 pounds.)
Kaarina Kaikkonen, Flying Rivers. Installation view. ©2023 Kaarina Kaikkonen. Courtesy of The Kennedy Center.
Kaarina Kaikkonen, one of Finland’s most internationally recognized artists, is fond of using old men’s shirts in her site-specific installations. The donated shirts, which once clothed and warmed someone’s heart, add both a human element to her message and a personal signature from the artist, who, as a child, cherished her deceased father’s old clothes.
Kaikkonen’s RiverRun installation is inspired by the Amazon’s “flying rivers,” the term for water vapor which is released by forest trees and, carried by air currents, delivers rain to South American areas that would otherwise be arid. The billowing old shirts emulate the rising air currents, but also reveal the frailty of the water cycle – and the humans who rely on it – as deforestation and climate change alter the Amazon tree canopy.
Debbie Allen’s Red Birds in “What About Us” at the RiverRun Festival. ©2023 Debbie Allen. Photo courtesy of the artist and The Kennedy Center.
RiverRun also recognizes the art and culture of those who neighbor the Kennedy Center and its hometown river, the Potomac. In a free April 15 program on the Center’s Millenium Stage, legendary dancer and Kennedy Center Honoree Debbie Allen and her company of talented Red Bird dancers will offer a special presentation of movement, spoken word, and song. The young dancers, trained in ballet, jazz, hip-hop, aerial arts and acting, celebrate nature and highlight the need to protect our planet.
