Kennedy Center Honors 5 Performing Artists for Cultural Contributions

Luminaries from the worlds of arts and politics gathered here to salute the winners of the 1995 Kennedy Center Honors: ballet dancer Jacques d’Amboise, diva Marilyn Horne, blues musician B.B. King, actor Sidney Poitier and playwright Neil Simon.

Two days of events culminated Sunday with the 18th Annual Kennedy Center Honors Gala, attended by President Clinton and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton. A series of performance tributes was delivered for each honoree.

The awards are presented annually to five artists who have made outstanding contributions to American culture through the performing arts.

In toasting d’Amboise at a banquet Saturday at the State Department, dancer Maria Tallchief likened him to Michael Jordan, suggesting that the basketball superstar could have learned his moves on the court from watching d’Amboise.

“I will never forget the first time I saw you on stage,” she said. “Jacques leaped from the wings and literally stayed in the air.”

D’Amboise, 61, was also praised for his National Dance Institute, a nationwide program that introduces at-risk children to dance.

Horne, 61, was honored for her achievements in opera and for her work with young artists through the Marilyn Horne Foundation, which awards grants to promising young vocalists.

Three artists who have benefited from her help performed a piece from one of her favorite operas, “The Barber of Seville,” at the gala Sunday night. Among them was Janet Williams, a young soprano who noted Horne’s “versatile and beautiful” voice and said: “She is simply an amazing woman.”

Guitarist and singer King, 70, born to farm workers in the Mississippi Delta, was honored for his role in the birth of blues and for his influence on other major American performers.

“The chords of rock were his before they belonged to Elvis,” said actor James Earl Jones on Saturday night.

Added jazz artist Herbie Hancock: “B.B. King is a great, intelligent, generous human being. He is a real model for all Americans, as he has been a model for me.”

At the Sunday night gala, a group of guests performed a medley of King’s songs. They included Bonnie Raitt, Dr. John, Joe Louis Walker and a host of blues greats, with television journalist Ed Bradley accompanying on tambourine.

Poitier, 68, was saluted for helping break racial barriers over four decades. He was the first black actor to be nominated for a best-actor Academy Award for 1958’s “The Defiant Ones,” the first African American to win the best-actor Oscar for 1963’s “Lilies of the Field,” the first to become a No. 1 box office star and the first to insist on a 50% black crew for his films.

Actor Louis Gossett Jr. declared that Poitier’s example was “singularly responsible” for his own career.

Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott lauded playwright Simon’s ability to make characters transcend time and place, making them genuine and universal.

Take, for example, Oscar and Felix, the lead characters in Simon’s 1965 smash, “The Odd Couple,” Talbott said. “In Washington, we call them Newt and Bob.”

Comic Steve Martin also saluted Simon but said he would much rather have spent the evening “sucking up to the President and talking about my favorite cause, the celebrity tax break.”

Simon, 69, holds an American theater record for number of hits, which include his 1980s autobiographical trilogy: “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” “Biloxi Blues” and “Broadway Bound.”

“More people have seen Neil Simon’s work than anyone since Shakespeare,” Jones said Saturday.