monday, december 6, 2010 CAROLYNHAX


She was unfaithful, he can’t get over it The cheating wife’s attitude is that it’s in the past and let’s move on. But he’s not ready to do that. What’s to be done? C5


Style ABCDE C EZ SU


Washington is Hollywood for ugly people.”Howdid


this phrase become everyone’s favorite gibe?


The


Reliable Source, C2


PERFORMINGARTS


Classical and pop music Reviews of Walkmen, Warpaint, the 21st Century Consort and others. C5


BOOKWORLD


‘Nights of the Red Moon’ Milton T. Burton’s third novel follows an East Texas sheriff in a lively and well-crafted mystery. C3


KENNEDYCENTERHONORS


LINDA DAVIDSON/THE WASHINGTON POST


RIBBONSOFPRAISE:Honorees Bill T. Jones, left, JerryHerman,MerleHaggard, Oprah Winfrey and PaulMcCartney, with first ladyMichelle Obama, President Obama, Alma Powell and former secretary of state Colin Powell, stand for the national anthem in the front balcony during theKennedy CenterHonors on Sunday night. The gala has been a mix-and-match of celebrity and celebration since 1978.


A medley of accolades Who shows up to celebrate whom gives the ceremony its glamour and surprise BY PAUL FARHI H TVREVIEW NBC’s ‘Sing-Off’ needs no accompaniment


Second season of talent competition


hits all the right notes BY HANK STUEVER


Twenty or so years ago, when it was


clear thatAmericanswere busily creating the cutest and most coddled babies ever born, some of uswondered:Whatwill all these cherubs growupto be? I, for one, would not have answered


“a cappella singers,” but that’s because I grew up in a nasty, gloomy era when teenagers and college students would havehurledthemselves intoapitof taran- tulas before joining the school choir. Butacappellaisapparentlytheanswer,


andit isheretostay.Welivenowintheage ofWay,WayUpwithPeople, andyouhave to wonder if future sociologists will con- nect all our singing shows (and dancing shows, and all the shaking of ourmotion- sensitive microphones and Wii wands and plastic guitars at home, and all those dormitory “lip dub” videos) as themeans by which we dealt with the horrible idea


that our world was falling to pieces. In otherwords:They all died singing. And so, returning once more to the


moonily emotive faces, sweeping hand gestures andmatching argyle sweaters of NBC’s engagingly happy “The Sing-Off” (the second season of which beginsMon- day night), I find myself charmed by its


SWEET SOUNDS: University of Oregon fraternity boys mix things up as On the Rocks.


HARPER SMITH/NBC


radiant dork beams of energy.Hooray for YuppetBabies! Being a bona fide competition among


10 real a cappella groups, “The Sing-Off” is different than the irony-laden, post-gay phantasmagoriaofFox’s “Glee,”whichhas


tv review continued on C6


alf the fun of the Kennedy Center Honors, and almost all of the surprise, comes from who shows up to celebrate whom each year. The celebrator- celebrated combos are often intriguing, and occa- sionally a bit puzzling—Sunday night’s gala being Exhibit A.


Sure, WillieNelson naturally showed up to sing the praises of


honoree Merle Haggard, and Broadway legends Carol Chan- ning and Angela Lansbury (looking and sounding swell at 89 and 85, respectively) did the same in honor of “Mame” and “Hello, Dolly!” composer-lyricist JerryHerman. But Alec Baldwin doing the intro for Paul McCartney? And


StevenTyler,NorahJones,Dave GrohlandGwenStefaniandNo Doubt providing the Beatles covers? Same thing with Julia


Roberts introducing Oprah Winfrey, or Claire Danes and playwright Edward Albee speaking on behalf of honoree Bill T. Jones, an avant-garde choreographer. Connections?Turns outOprahandRoberts are old friends, as


are Danes and Jones; Baldwin and McCartney are East Hampton neighborswhotakesummeryoga class together (why didn’t People magazine tell us this?). Albee (himself a 1996 Kennedy Center honoree) apparently just likes Jones. The jumbled mix-and-match of celebrity and celebration is


all part of the black-tie evening, which has combined speechify- ing, song and spectacle every year since the Honors began in 1978. There aren’t too many events that combine the disparate elements of theHonors, and certainly not any that includes the president and vice president and their wives sitting in the first row of the balcony with the five recipients. The highlights of this year’s ceremony before the usual crowd of swells and dignitaries (tickets ran from $350 to $5,000)


included a rousing Broadway revue ofHerman’s work, starring “Glee’s” Matthew Morrison and featuring the singing of an all-star lineup that included Christine Baranski, Chita Rivera, Laura Benanti,Kelsey Grammer,Christine Ebersole and Sutton Foster. An extended singalong of “Hey Jude,” hitting what seemed


like all 19 “Na na naah” lines from the original, brought Sir Paul, the president and first lady and the crowd to their feet, with the audience waving cellphones. And Jennifer Hudson drew a standing ovation for a powerful, rafters-shaking version of “I’m Here,” from “The Color Purple,” the movie a young Winfrey starred in and later produced as a Broadway musical. The praise for the recipients, as you might expect, was


flowing. Sitting onstage on a mock “Oprah” set, BarbaraWalters said


honors continued on C9 DANCEREVIEW


Washington Ballet dazzles with a capital ‘Nutcracker’


BY SARAH KAUFMAN We’re knee-deep in the nationwide


“Nutcracker” rollout, the great Ameri- canChristmas party hosted by your local ballet troupe. If most other ballets have but a wobbly footing on the national cultural scene, the escapades of little children and tippy-toeing mice hold us in eternal thrall. Why? Dress and decorate their “Nutcrack-


ers” as they might — at the Warner Theatre, theWashington Ballethewsto a Washington theme; more on that in a moment — the one thing ballet compa- nies never mess with is Tchaikovsky’s music. I think the music is the chief reason “The Nutcracker” remains so popular: Tchaikovsky’s score is an invit- ing world unto itself, with its building sense of wonder twinned with nostalgia. Its moods can be joyous, poignant or tender, but it is resoundingly optimistic, with none of the darker emotional up-


dance review continued on C2


KATHERINE FREY/THE WASHINGTON POST


HOLIDAY SCENE: Jong-Suk Park’s TomCat leaps up behind a startled SarahWalborn in “TheNutcracker.”


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