Category: people

Rodriguez, together with her husband Augie, brought the mambo to life on TV, including on The Ed Sullivan Show and Broadway Tonight. “At the height of their fame, they danced in London for Queen Elizabeth II and at the White House for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon.” – The New York Times

The British artist’s “video, audio and photographic installations ingeniously explored extinct languages, alien abductions, girls with psychic powers and the Holocaust.” – The New York Times

Admired as much for his unusual communicative gifts (especially in American English) as for his warm and gentle voice, Sylvan began his career in Boston’s chamber and early music scenes and first became known for his performances in Peter Sellars’s 1980s Mozart stagings. He was a favorite of John Adams, who wrote the song cycle The Wound-Dresser for him, and two of his most famous opera roles were as Chou En-Lai in Nixon in China and the title role in The Death of Klinghoffer. — NPR

“His films, known for scenes of nudity and explicit sex, often centered on the sexual liberation of a female character. … Makavejev’s work — part of a ‘Black Wave’ of filmmaking in his country — also was raucously subversive, anti-bureaucratic and frequently banned by authorities. He audaciously attacked dogmas, whether they came from the East or the West. Not surprisingly, he was treated as royalty at film festivals.” — The Hollywood Reporter

Mr. DeRogatis veers from expletive-laden indignation to choked-back tears when describing the effects of Mr. Kelly’s alleged behavior with what he estimates to be at least 48 women. But he has a special frustration with the rest of the news media, which, he says, failed to follow The Sun-Times’s investigative lead, and for years made light of the charges or ignored them altogether. – The New York Times

“The painter meticulously crafted her own image on a par with Cleopatra. If she were alive today, she’d probably be teaching a branding class at Harvard. Now it’s America’s turn to see how, and, more important, why she did it.” — The New York Times

He’s best known to the public as the mogul widely considered to have bought a Golden Globe award for his actress-singer wife (whom he met when she was 19 and he was 49). But before that, he was the original leveraged-buyout corporate raider and co-founded Carnival Cruise Lines. Later, he produced a women’s pro wrestling TV series and became one of Las Vegas’s top casino-hotel and entertainment moguls — until he went bankrupt and fled home to Israel. — The Hollywood Reporter

After earning a Ph.D. in anthropology and doing field research in Central America, she moved from the U.S. to London and began her art career in the 1960s. While grouped with the Conceptualists, she called herself a “paraconceptualist” because of her interest in paranormal phenomena, which she incorporated into her multimedia work. — The Art Newspaper

The 52-year-old countertenor and his husband were taken into custody for extradition to Texas, where a singer alleges that the couple drugged and raped him while Daniels was performing at Houston Grand Opera in 2010. — MLive (Michigan)

Recruited by his cousin, resistance leader Georges Loinger (who recently passed away at age 108), Marceau used his mime and acting skills to convince German and Vichy authorities that he was a teacher or youth leader taking young kids (who happened to be Jewish and incognito) to an exercise camp (that happened to be on the Swiss border). — The History Channel