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Robert Cohan, Who Brought Contemporary Dance To Great Britain, Dead At 95

"A New Yorker who performed with Martha Graham's dance company, often partnering Graham herself, Cohan moved to London where, in 1967, he became the first artistic director of the venue The Place, as well as the London Contemporary Dance School and the company London Contemporary Dance Theatre. His partnership with the founder of those organisations, Robin Howard, changed the...

New Memoir’s Accusations of Incest Rattle French Intelligentsia And Its Culture Of Silence

In the book, La familia grande, prominent attorney Camille Kouchner, the daughter of Bernard Kouchner, former foreign minister and co-founder of Doctors Without Borders, says that her stepfather — political scientist and well-known pundit Olivier Duhamel, chairman (until last week) of the body that oversees the renowned Paris university Sciences Po — sexually abused her twin brother for two...

Jazz Pianist Frank Kimbrough Dead At 64

"Casual of gesture but deeply focused in demeanor, had an understated style that could nonetheless hold the spotlight in trio settings, or fit slyly into Schneider's 18-piece big band. In many ways, his playing reflected the Romantic, floating manner of his first jazz influence, Bill Evans. But his off-kilter style as both a player and a composer...

Author Ved Mehta, 86

Known for a 12-volume autobiography and more than a dozen more books, many of which got their start as New Yorker articles (he was a staff writer for decades), he had a carefully honed prose style full of vivid description — despite the fact that he had been blind from age 3. (His sense of hearing was said to...

Patricia Loud, Matriarch Of America’s First Reality TV Family, Dead At 94

"Ms. Loud was a California mother of five. She drank, she plotted her divorce, she adored, and accepted, her openly gay son. She did it all in Santa Barbara and all on camera — in 1973. Loving, boisterous, witty, resilient and sometimes angry and hurt, she did not act like most women on television at the time. But she...

After 43 Years, Chicago Tribune Arts Critic Howard Reich Retires

He reflects on his career and (in typical fashion) leaves readers with a basketful of music, book and video recommendations. - Chicago Tribune

Author Jacqueline Woodson Gets A Lot Done, But How?

The MacArthur Fellow, who has also won the National Book Award and lives with her partner and two children in Brooklyn, is building Baldwin Arts, an artists colony for writers, composers, and visual artists of color. Lots of free time there, right? "We all find our space. In my bubble, I’m working on a book or a screenplay, going...

Carol Johnson, Whose Landscape Architecture Transformed The Country, 91

Johnson, who was also known for her public housing project designs, became famous for her "large-scale public projects, which often involved environmental remediation. For the Mystic River State Reservation, a nature preserve in Eastern Mass., a commission she received in the 1970s, she transformed a toxic landfill into a public park. The John F. Kennedy Park along the Charles River in Cambridge,...

Michael Apted, Director Of Coal Miner’s Daughter And The 7-Up Series, 79

Apted's series - the latest, 63-Up, came out in 2019 - was only one project from the director of many movies, including Gorillas in the Mist and The World Is Not Enough. But the British director referred to the Up documentaries as "the most important thing I have ever done." Last year, he said that "The series was an...

Neil Sheehan, 84, NYT Vietnam Reporter Who Got The Pentagon Papers

"Mr. Sheehan, the son of impoverished Irish-immigrant dairy farmers, graduated from Harvard University and served in the Army before joining the United Press International wire service. Reporting from Saigon in the early 1960s, he became known as one of the “fearless threesome” of Vietnam War correspondents." - The New York Times

Why Are A Bunch Of Teens Convinced That Helen Keller Wasn’t Deaf-Blind?

Blame TikTok and the pathologies of social media in the age of fake news. A couple of (so-called) satirical videos were posted last year on the app; teens picked up on them and made their own vids joining in; as #helenkellerisfake and #helenkellerhateclub got millions of views, the facts that Keller was world-famous for what she achieved and died...

Ellen Burstyn On Her Fame (She’s Been *Very* Fortunate)

"It was never really my intention to be a movie star," says the actress, who's probably about to get her seventh Oscar nomination at age 88. "I've never been one of those celebrities who got chased down the street by shouting throngs. People are always very nice to me. It hasn't been at all unpleasant." - The Guardian

Novelist Eric Jerome Dickey Dead At 59

" was an aspiring actor and stand-up comic who began writing fiction in his mid-30s and shaped a witty, conversational and sometimes graphic prose style. It brought him a wide readership through such novels as Sister, Sister and Naughty or Nice and through his Gideon crime fiction series, which included Sleeping With Strangers and Resurrecting Midnight." - Yahoo! (AP)

Lee Breuer, Experimental Stage Director, Dead At 83

"A tenacious outsider who refused his sole Tony Award nomination — for his biggest hit and only Broadway show, the Sophocles adaptation The Gospel at Colonus — Mr. Breuer flourished in the scrappier realm of Off Off Broadway, even as the scale of his works and ambitions took him to larger stages, including the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the...

IRS: Executors Undervalued Prince’s Estate By $80 Million

The IRS determined that Prince’s estate is worth $163.2m, overshadowing the $82.3m valuation submitted by Comerica Bank & Trust, the estate’s administrator. The discrepancy primarily involves Prince’s music publishing and recording interests, according to court documents. - The Guardian

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