The award-winning, beleaguered dissident — famous recently for his dance and opera productions — is also a filmmaker, and he has a new title, Petrov's Flu, in competition at Cannes this year. He wrote the screenplay while under house arrest pending trial on an embezzlement cased widely considered to be trumped-up; he was convicted on that charge last June...
" nearly five decades at the head of the company shaped it into one of the world's most prominent and recognizable publishers of children's literature" — including the Baby-Sitters Club, Captain Underpants, Hunger Games and Harry Potter books — "and an influential education and media company." - Publishers Weekly
Wada wrote and performed music that "was characterized by dense, sustained sounds that could create mind-bending acoustic effects. He borrowed widely from different musical traditions — Indian ragas, Macedonian folk singing and Scottish bagpipes — all while supporting his musical life by working in construction" - which meant that sometimes, tools of the trade (like plumbing pipes) became instruments....
Rivera began by asking her neighbors to be her subjects. "The images she made were majestic four-by-four-foot prints of everyday New Yorkers of all ages. They were time-stamped by their hair styles and clothing as citizens of the 1970s and ’80s, but they were made eternal by their direct gazes, formal poses and the nimbus of light with which Ms. Rivera...
Mayröcker, an Austrian, earned acclaim as a formally inventive poet, but her writing "ranged far more widely, producing an immense body of work that encompassed nearly every literary genre: novels, memoirs, children’s books, drama and radio plays as well as poetry. (Only a handful of her works have been translated into English.)" Perhaps that should change. - The New...
Olivia Rodrigo has figured out something that few have before her. There's" a shift within the Disney sphere, which has apparently evolved enough to allow its stars to curse while still holding down jobs on PG-rated television." - Washington Post
Biasotto was the co-founder of Grupo Krapp with his longtime artistic partner, Luciana Acuña, who wrote, "Luis moved comfortably in the abyss. The emptiness, besides giving him panic, gave him peace of mind. A brave being, by nature. A contemporary hero out of a Marvel comic book. To rehearse with Luis was not being able to stop admiring him,...
He started in 1961 with one AM station, which he ran while working as a high school principal, in small-town North Carolina. Sixty years on, his Beasley Broadcast Group is one of the five largest radio groups in the U.S., with 62 stations and 20 million listeners a week. - Billboard
He shepherded the work of a remarkable group of authors ranging from Cormac McCarthy to Jill Lepore to Oliver Sacks and beyond. Perhaps his two biggest coups were seeing the potential of graphic narrative to be an enduring genre beyond Art Spiegelman's Maus (he worked with Spiegelman on subsequent books, and also with Marjane Satrapi and Ben Katchor) and...
As an artist, "Luz was best known as an artist who liked to use spare lines and dramatic compositions in his practice that included painting, collage, printmaking, sculpture and photography." But he was much more. "As an art administrator and curator from the 1960s onwards, he championed a modernist visual language in sharp contrast to prevailing fashions favouring classic...
Elvin, a Russian dancer who also performed with the Bolshoi, "gave London audiences one of the first tastes of Russian style. ... Elvin created roles in Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella (Summer Fairy, 1948), Daphnis and Chloe (Lykanion, 1951), Homage to the Queen (1953), and Birthday Offering (1956), as well as Roland Petit’s Ballabile (1950)." - Gramilano
The prison was closed to the public in 2013 on "health and safety grounds," but actors including Kate Winslet, local politicians, and more want to preserve the area, and turn the prison into a museum. Will Reading let them? - The New York Times
Oberlander, who died at the age of 99 in May, had a long, rich career whose influence continues to grow. She was "an early proponent of rewilding, community consultation, pedestrian-friendly accessibility and creative playgrounds for children," and her devotion to green spaces and the influence of greenery on humans "tell a story of a great mind that spearheaded change...
Ehlert created 38 books for young children as an author and illustrator. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, which she illustrated with her signature collages, has sold more than 12 million copies since its publication. She was a Caldecott winner for the 1997 board book Color Zoo. "Her workday, she said, was a never-ending series of paper cuts." - The New...
Five feet tall and born with a curved spine, he was a young journalist interviewing Pina Bausch when she asked him to work with her; after a decade, he began making pieces of his own. His solo work, whether for himself or colleagues, tended toward the political; his dances for larger ensembles mixed contemporary ballet with butoh and set...
