What will the Kennedy Center look like now that Trump has taken over and board members are resigning?

Dear Gossips,

Last June, the Kennedy Center hosted a weeklong festival called 10,000 Dreams: A Celebration of Asian Choreography, curated by the center and choreographer Phil Chan, president of the Gold Standard Arts Foundation which champions Asian talent across creative disciplines. Phil is also co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface, an organisation that aims to improve representation of Asians in ballet.

The festival included a one-night-only tribute to Choo San Goh who, before his death in 1987 at the age of 39, was the resident choreographer for Washington Ballet for almost a decade, and whose work was featured by American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey, Paris Opera, and many more companies around the world.

Part of the program that evening included a performance of Ballade, a ballet by Choo San Goh that hadn’t been presented in over 30 years. Ballade was inspired by Choo San’s niece, Chan Han Goh, when she was 16 years old. She would go on to become the first principal dancer of Chinese descent at the National Ballet of Canada. Chan Han Goh’s parents, like her uncle, were also dancers. This family is a ballet dynasty. And her staging of Ballade all these years later, in honour of her late uncle, at the Kennedy Center, was a beautiful, full-circle moment. I remember interviewing her about it just before she left for the event, enthralled by her family history, and feeling so grateful that Phil Chan and the Kennedy Center were giving her uncle, and her family, the shine they deserved.

Now though? Pretty sure that festival wouldn’t happen. Donald Trump has taken over the Kennedy Center. Its longtime president, Deborah F Rutter, has been fired. Other board members, like Shonda Rhimes, are resigning. Ben Folds, an advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra, which is overseen by the Kennedy Centre, is also stepping away. Apparently Trump is done with the “woke culture” of the Kennedy Center and according to CBS News, “some content on the Kennedy Center website is also expected to be removed, including a reference to the fact that the center is "standing on the traditional land" of the Nacotchtank and Piscataway tribes”.

Artists are often among the first to be silenced when fascism rises. And of course when autocratic regimes come to power, they can’t f-cking wait to revise history and even geography to their will. What makes this even more terrifying is that in our times, conglomerates control the output of those in artistic communities, from film and television and music to book publishing and fashion.

What will the Kennedy Center look like now? Its most well-known event is the annual Kennedy Center Honours, and during his first administration, Trump stayed away from it because many of the artists who were recognised refused to show up if he was there. Now that he’s basically staged a coup, though, and installed his own people into leadership positions there, the Kennedy Center Honours will likely turn into a blowjob, like his campaign rallies, with violins instead of a DJ.

I’ll wrap this up then by reposting one of the most memorable Kennedy Center Honours performances of all time. This coming December will mark the 10th anniversary of Aretha Franklin paying tribute to Carole King. I cry every time I watch this. I’ve cried in appreciation and admiration, I’ve cried because art is supposed to move us. I just cried again, tears of grief this time. In its purest form though, art speaks to possibility. Hard to see the possibility, I know, right now. But this also is why art, now, is more vital than ever.