Agreed: Mirth, with thee I mean to live. The chorus sings these words at the exultant finish of Mark Morris’s “L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato,” which transforms the Handel oratorio into a visual feast with the happiest dancing you could hope to see. And as you watch the dancers join hands and circle the Kennedy Center Opera House stage, the whole cast whirling in a spin-cycle of physical joy, living by that sentiment feels entirely possible. Read full article > >

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Under Mark Morris, Handel oratorio becomes a visual feast

A baggage handler at Kennedy Airport was the leader of a drug-smuggling ring, and his associates were other airline workers.

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Cocaine Smuggling Case Shows Airline Baggage Handlers’ Misconduct

NEW YORK — A second senior citizen is claiming the Transportation Security Administration made her pull down her pants as part of a search at New York’s Kennedy Airport. Ruth Sherman, 88, of Sunrise, Fla., told WCBS television (http://cbsloc.al/sD3xsS ) that agents were suspicious about her colostomy bag and asked her to pull down the waist of her pants so they could see it on Nov. 28. Read full article > >

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2nd elderly woman complains about having to lower pants for TSA at New York’s JFK airport

Made prominent by his coverage of the Kennedy assassination, Mr. Wicker became Washington bureau chief for The New York Times and an iconoclastic columnist.

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Tom Wicker, Journalist and Author, Dies at 85

With the holiday this week, our list of the best weekend events goes from Thursday through Sunday, so we’ve got you covered from the first bite of turkey to the last snap of football on Sunday. Check out a few of the highlights here, and then view our full list of a dozen ideas. Once you’ve finished your big Thanksgiving dinner, head to the Kennedy Center to dance some of those calories away. The Daryl Davis Band performs two sets of swing tunes for you to jump, twist and dance along to on the floor. Gottaswing providing dance lessons before each set. Read full article > >

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Plan your Thanksgiving weekend: Swing dancing, Mastodon

The first bit of action in Septime ­Webre’s “The Great Gatsby” is the emergence of the jazz band, rising on a lift from the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater’s orchestra pit, the tuba and string bass glowing under the lights like oil lamps. It’s fitting that vocalist E. Faye Butler and the six musicians of Billy Novick’s Blue Syncopators receive such a prominent introduction, because they are the starring attraction of this production, which the Washington Ballet reprised Thursday after its February 2010 premiere. It is the music — vintage selections by Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Irving Berlin and more — that not only sets the mood for each scene but contributes to the emotional and dramatic tension, helps define the characters and distinguishes one episode from another. This is helpful because the choreography, lively and acrobatic as it is, doesn’t tell us much about the story. Read full article > >

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Washington Ballet’s “The Great Gatsby”

The Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s farewell tour will bring it to the Kennedy Center Dec. 2-3, and in anticipation of seeing this one-of-a-kind choreography for the very last time, I’ve been reading Carolyn Brown’s engrossing 2007 memoir, “Chance and Circumstance” (Northwestern University Press). This is illuminating reading for any Cunningham fan, any dance lover — indeed, anyone interested in mid-century American art. As far as passions, drama and boundary-busting zeal go, the circles modern-dance choreographer Cunningham, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg and their pals ran in rival those of Updike, Bellow and other assorted modernists and beatniks. Read full article > >

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Merce Cunningham: The ‘naked honesty’ of life as his dancer

One of the indelible images of Sonny Rollins’s career is of his practicing alone on the Williamsburg Bridge during his 1959-61 sabbatical from public performance. But the tenor saxophonist is no longer a solo act, even though he was billed as such for his show Monday evening at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. The onetime “ Saxophone Colossus ,” as a 1956 album title had it, has become a band leader, and has turned conserving his strength into a winning musical strategy. Read full article > >

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Sonny Rollins plays the Kennedy Center

Can you hear it — the roar of pink? With the start of October comes annual proof of breast cancer’s dominance on the cause circuit. The always A-listy Susan G. Komen for the Cure gala at the Kennedy Center will cap off the month, but pink ribbons are already spilling out everywhere, from the NFL field — where players are already accessorized with the hue — to screen stars. Read full article > >

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Jennifer Aniston offers starpower but few words in D.C. for breast cancer movie

There were rambling moments and unnecessary stage turns during Monday’s gala celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater. But every minute of the 3 1 / 2 -hour program was worth it just to hear the evening’s honored guest, Aretha Franklin, sing jazz. Read full article > >

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Aretha Franklin steals the show at Monk Institute anniversary gala

Oscar-winning US actor Cliff Robertson, who portrayed John F Kennedy in the 1963 film PT-109, dies at the age of 88.

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Film actor Cliff Robertson dies

Oscar-winning actress Meryl Streep is named as one the recipients of this year’s Kennedy Center honours.

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Streep to receive Kennedy honour

Wolf Trap , to many, denotes commercial pop at the Filene Center. But the Wolf Trap Opera is a different animal: a tiny, can-do opera company focused not on presenting big stars but on cultivating future ones. In Wolf Trap’s 40 years, singers from this company have colonized the opera world as artists and administrators. A raft of them returned to the Filene Center on Wednesday for a gala concert, the highlight of Wolf Trap’s 40th anniversary, of a type and caliber even the Kennedy Center hasn’t offered for years. The singers care so much about the place they even donated their services. Read full article > >

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At Wolf Trap Opera gala, enough star wattage to power operahouse 40 more years

For the nostalgic ex-showgirls of the Kennedy Center’s “ Follies ,” there are more Broadway memories to be made. The center revealed Wednesday that its $7.3 million production will move this summer to a Broadway theater in the heart of Times Square. The dates have not been firmed up, but Michael M. Kaiser, the Kennedy Center’s president, said that the Marquis Theatre, on Broadway between West 45th and West 46th streets, has been secured for the limited engagement, beginning midsummer and, depending on the strength of ticket sales, running possibly into the winter. Read full article > >

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Kennedy Center’s ‘Follies’ is Broadway-bound

Shuttle Endeavour touched down safely at the Kennedy Space Center early Wednesday morning, completing its final mission to space. (June 1) Read full article > >

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Shuttle Endeavour touches down