A Hot Gala Launches the Nordic Cool Festival at the Kennedy Center (Photos)

All that was missing from the Nordic Cool gala on Tuesday night, to make it completely
Scandinavian, was a sauna. But then there’s probably not a sauna at the annual Nobel
Prize dinner in Stockholm, either, and the Kennedy Center soiree was modeled on that august event. As with the Nobel dinner, the dress was white tie, tails, medals, and
national dress, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra performed, the floral designer
for the Nobel dinner did the flowers, there were two long candlelit “king’s tables,”
and the meal highlighted Scandinavian cuisine.

We asked our Danish dinner partner if back home, the traditional sauna would be indulged
in before or after dinner.
Benedicte Brocks, who is with Denmark’s Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, laughed and cited her Viking
heritage. “Probably both, but to perform the ritual here we would need a lake where
we could make a hole in the ice,” she said. Which is probably why the party didn’t
need a sauna to be a hit or to add heat to the Nordic cool.

The colorful and cheerful evening had a guest list of 550 people, including the ambassadors
from or to Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Greenland, the Faroe and Åland
Islands, an assortment of those countries’ ministers, US government officials, Kennedy
Center trustees, corporate representatives, and two actual Nobel laureates: economists

Dale T. Mortensen and
Roger Myerson. The hosts were its cochairs,
Bonnie McElveen-Hunter,
Marilyn Carlson Nelson, and
Glen Nelson; the welcoming and speaking responsibilities fell to Kennedy Center president
Michael Kaiser, wearing his Order of the Aztec Eagle medal, and its board chairman,
David Rubenstein. The event launched a monthlong Kennedy Center festival of Nordic culture: theater, dance, music, visual arts, literature, design, cuisine,
and film. More than 750 artists have been involved in bringing it all together.

Guests could tell the evening would be a cut above the norm as they drove up to the
Kennedy Center and noticed that the venue itself got dressed up for the occasion—the
entire building was bathed in impressive blue and fuchsia lights designed to replicate
the aurora borealis, also known as the Northern lights. Inside the Hall of States,
the arriving guests were dwarfed by a stunning floor-to-ceiling Finnish installation
of one thousand shirts donated by DC residents, hanging in the shape of a boat. Artist

Kaarina Kaikkonen calls her design ”Are We Still Afloat?” It’s so overwhelming and amusing that thoughts
of laundry are quickly arrived at and dispelled.

The reception on the rooftop terrace was for cocktails, canapes, and a chance to view
the main Nordic Cool exhibition: room after room of displays that include mannequins
adorned with provocative fashions from Iceland (Björk’s infamous swan dress from the
2001 Oscars hailed from the same country), an interactive installation that provides
the roaring sound and fluid visuals of waterfalls, plywood sculptures from the design firm Snøhetta, striking large-scale pieces from the Louisiana Museum,
and a dozen or more Lego play tables for, as the program put it, “kids of all ages.”
We noticed a woman in a red evening dress and with a forearm tattoo (not sure if it
was a dragon), studiously focused on the Lego table.

Waiters passed trays of smoked salmon, caviar, fish, and meatballs that provided a
first taste of the evening’s culinary fare—all of it, from canapes to dessert, under
the supervision of
Morten Sohlberg, who owns the Smörgås chain of restaurants in New York and New Jersey, as well as
Blenheim Hill Farm, a 150-acre farm near the Catskills that provides the vegetables
and meat for the restaurants. With the exception of the crabmeat served as a first
course, the Blenheim farm was the source of the evening’s food: the pork and beef
in the incredible Swedish meatballs, the potatoes, vegetables, and herbs, the special
rye bread, and the lamb served three ways as the main course.

“It’s the first time whole carcasses have been brought into the Kennedy Center,” Sohlberg
said of the three-day process of preparing the meal, adding, “It’s also the first
time whole carcasses have been butchered at the Kennedy Center.” It was worth the
effort, because the meal was exceptional, praised all around, and a departure from
the typical gala menu. The finale was a dessert that actually glowed from within:
a mound of maple spun sugar surrounded by bite-size mousses and meringues, adorned
with black currants, lingonberries, elderflower, and sea buckthorn.

The food itself was entertainment enough, but there were also performances and speeches
between courses. A full choir performed a native song, a trio of sisters sang traditional
folk tunes that sounded almost Native American, and pianist Víkingur Ólafsson roused the room as the
clock moved toward midnight.

“I’m particularly pleased to be the chairman of the Kennedy Center at this time,”
said David Rubenstein, “because I have spent a number of days and weeks, in many cases,
in Nordic countries. . . . I always enjoy the culture and the people, and the friendliness
and the ties they have with the United States. This festival really brings that together.”

Rubenstein made light of the dress code for the evening. “I’m the only person here
in white tie and tails without a medal,” he said. “I’ve never earned a medal, but
I hope someday to get a medal I can wear with white tie and tails.” Later, though,
he indicated he might not race to that occasion. Asked how he felt in the outfit’s
required components—a crisp pique shirt, a white bow tie, a snug white waistcoat,
a starched wing collar, and the tailcoat—Rubenstein confessed, “It’s the most uncomfortable
thing I’ve ever worn.”

He could always take a pointer from perhaps the evening’s coolest dresser, Swedish
florist
Gunnar Kaj, who created beguiling arrangements of poppies, begonias, fuchsia, and tulips for
the reception, concert, and dinner. He dressed in native Swedish formal attire, complete with buckled shoes,
knee socks, breeches, a red vest, tails, a white shirt with red appliqués, and a blue
tie.