KENNEDY CENTER HONORS PERFORMING ARTISTS

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has just named six celebrated artists to receive Kennedy Center Honors for 1992:

Actors Paul Newman and his wife, Joanne Woodward, musician Mstislav Rostropovich, dancer and actress Ginger Rogers, musician Lionel Hampton, and choreographer Paul Taylor.

The Kennedy Center Honors, now in their 15th year, are a crowning achievement for performing artists and a national recognition of a lifetime devoted to their art. Since the founding of the Honors, the list has become a kind of "Who's Who" in the performing arts. This year's honorees will be celebrated at the Kennedy Center Opera House on Sunday, Dec. 6. CBS will televise the event later in December.

Kennedy Center chairman James D. Wolfensohn, announcing the honorees on behalf of the board of trustees, praised the winners for "enhancing the lives of people around the world and enriching the culture of our nation..."

Newman has won seven Academy Award nominations and two Oscars in a film career ranging from "Hud" to "The Verdict," and Joanne Woodward won an Oscar nomination for "Rachel, Rachel," which her husband directed.

Ginger Rogers danced her way to fame with Fred Astaire in the nine film musicals they made, then captured an Oscar for "Kitty Foyle." Internationally famous cellist and conductor, Mstislav Rostropovich, stripped of his Russian citizenship, found a successful new life in the US as music director of the National Symphony Orchestra. Lionel Hampton, the leading player of the vibraphone, introduced it into jazz and changed that music forever. Paul Taylor, a celebrated modern dance choreographer, has choreogra phed more than 90 dances for his own company.