Toni Pierce-Sands, a featured soloist in some of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s most iconic suites and a co-founder of celebrated Twin Cities company TU Dance, died Tuesday in Minneapolis. She was 63 and had been battling cancer. - The Star-Tribune
June Squibb made her Broadway debut in the Ethel Merman-led production of “Gypsy” as a replacement for one of the strippers. What would she have said if someone had told her back then that she’d eventually get a starring role on Broadway, but that it wouldn’t happen for another 65 years? - Los Angeles Times
While he called the reporting of the allegations “unfair,” Adjaye didn’t address directly the substance of the charges (which he denied when the first reports came out). Rather, he spoke about the effect the accusations had on him and what he sees as the media’s motives in reporting the story. - Dezeen
The actor, who was artistic director of the Old Vic theatre in London from 2004 to 2013, was acquitted on nine sexual assault charges in the UK in 2023. Now he faces three civil lawsuits, two of them by accusers in the criminal cases. - BBC (MSN)
A man of consummate urbanity who lived like a country squire, he was a sportsman (cricket was his game) and a connoisseur of ideas, which he treated with a cricketer’s agility and vigor. - Los Angeles Times
“Dr. Soloway went to red carpet events related to the show,” but she didn’t love them. “She was very humble in terms of publicity; she wasn’t interested in it. … She loved the show and us and the character, but sometimes she wasn’t in the mood to be everyone’s favorite trailblazer.” - Chicago Sun-Times
Woodrell was “a novelist known for prose as rugged and elemental as the igneous rock of the Ozark Mountains, his birthplace, which he returned to just as his artistic craftsmanship peaked.” - The New York Times
“Everyone else is so calm, and everyone’s working or researching or something. It’s almost like a movie set, and I have to pretend I’m working, too. Everyone should have a library card. It’s like a bicycle but for your brain.” - The New York Times
“One of a select band of writers from any discipline to earn his own adjective – ‘Stoppardian’ – in the Oxford English Dictionary, he delighted in the most improbable juxtapositions.” He also shared a co-writing Oscar for Shakespeare in Love. - The Guardian (UK)
Carl Rollyson: “After writing three biographies of Sylvia Plath, what more could I possibly say about her suicide? Yet … in Plath’s case, (there are) very different circumstances that separate her suicide attempt in 1953 from her second, fatal one nearly a decade later.” - The Hedgehog Review
“Thomas King, … the writer of books including 2003's The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative and 2012's The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America, says he is reeling from recent news that he has no Cherokee ancestry.” - CBC
Vogel and her husband, a postal clerk, "bought thousands of works from future art stars like Sol LeWitt and Donald Judd, stashing them in their cramped one-bedroom New York apartment and eventually handing over the entire collection to the National Gallery of Art.” - The New York Times
His powerful voice, authoritative presence and incisive musicianship led him to a major international career including the Met, Covent Garden, and La Scala. He had a 23-year relationship with the Bayreuth Festival, where he took the role of Wotan/the Wanderer in the landmark 1976 Chéreau/Boulez production of the Ring cycle. - Moto Perpetuo
“Two more former employees of the soul music star Smokey Robinson, both male and female, have alleged he sexually assaulted them, which he denies. Robinson is already facing similar allegations from four other former employees, who filed a ($50 million) joint lawsuit in May.” - The Guardian
