Natalia Makarova among those receiving the 2012 Kennedy Center Honors

The Kennedy Cen­ter Hon­ors award is the nation’s highest hon­our for those who have influ­enced Amer­ican cul­ture through the arts. It comes with a din­ner with Sec­ret­ary of State Hil­lary Rod­ham Clin­ton and a recep­tion hos­ted by Pres­id­ent Barack Obama. The hon­our­ees will be saluted by their fel­low artists on 2 Decem­ber in a show which will be broad­cast by CBS on Box­ing Day.

Nat­alia Makarova is one of the seven recip­i­ents this year. Kennedy Cen­ter Chair­man David Ruben­stein said that her artistry had

…ignited the stages of the world’s greatest bal­let companies.

The 72-year-old baller­ina per­formed in Romeo and Juliet at the Kennedy Cen­ter in 1971, days after it opened, and just a year after defect­ing from her nat­ive Russia.

Makarova com­men­ted,

What a remark­able twist of fate that I chose to leave my home­land and came to Amer­ica to start a new life. I feel very priv­ileged that through me Kennedy Cen­ter hon­ours clas­sical ballet.

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