The 2008-2009 season of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington will feature one very special three-week festival focusing on Arab arts and culture, it was announced Tuesday.

The “Arabesque: Arts of the Arab World” festival, unfolding between Feb. 25 and March 15, 2009, will feature artists from all 22 Arab nations in what Kennedy Center president Michael Kaiser says will be the largest presentation of Arab arts ever in the United States.

The festival will be presented in cooperation with the League of Arab States, the Washington Post reports. “Arabesque,” which benefits from a $10 million budget, will delight visitors with work in dance, music, theater and film. It includes a retelling of William Shakespeare’s play “Richard III,” set in the contemporary Arab world, as well as play called “Alive from Palestine: Stories under Occupation,” the Post reports.

There will be dance ensembles from Lebanon, the Caracalla Dance Theater, and Syria, and exhibits of Arab photography, sculpture and fashion.

Kaiser told the Washington Post the festival aims to show “other sides of Arab people than people here are reading about in the newspaper.”

“Art is a way of examining what their concerns are, what they're talking about,” he said.

There will even be a souk, a public market, set up on the premises of the Kennedy Center, where typical Middle Eastern wares will be offered for sale.

As he announced the September-through-August calendar, Kaiser was also excited about the forthcoming ballet season, which he described as “the strongest” the center has had under his tenure, with performances from eight ballet companies, including the Bolshoi and the Royal Ballet, and nine modern dance troupes, among others.

Other highlights of the 2008-2009 season include the 35-day Arts Across America festival, which focuses on American contributions to the arts and culture; new productions of the classics “Ragtime” and a musical version of “Giant”; the National Symphony Orchestra will perform for the first time without music director Leonard Slatkin, who steps down in June; guest artists with the NSO include pianists Garrick Ohlsson, Leif Ove Andsnes and Helene Grimaud, violinists Gil Shaham and Itzhak Perlman and soprano Karita Mattila.

Learn more by visiting the official website of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts at http://www.kennedy-center.org\