Maya Plisetskaya, “renowned for her fluidity of movement, expressive acting and willful personality, danced on the Bolshoi stage well into her 60s. Vadim Gayevsky, a dance historian and critic, once said she ‘began by creating her own style and ended up creating her own theater.'”
Category: people
Remembering The Young Oliver Sacks
“The world was saddened to learn of neurologist and best-selling author Oliver Sacks’s terminal illness through a recent op-ed. With Sacks’s new autobiography out this month, Lawrence Weschler shares early stories and diary entries about Sacks, his close friend, before Sacks achieved worldwide fame.”
Le Corbusier – The Man, The Modernist, The Painter, The Nudist
“He redefined architecture for the 20th century, pioneered modernity, made radical urban utopias for the masses – and spent his last years nearly nude in a cabin inspired by human physiology.” (slide show)
David Letterman On 33 Years In Late-Night Television
“Q: Did you think people were surprised to hear you talk about these matters [i.e., his sex scandal] so candidly?
A: I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t think of a really good lie.”
Betsy Von Furstenberg, 83, Baroness And Actress
“A glamorous German-born baroness who made her debut in the movies and on the Broadway stage in the early 1950s as a teenager and later reinvented herself as a television actress, writer and philanthropist.”
Trumpeter Rolf Smedvig, 62
“Perhaps best known as one of the founding members of the widely acclaimed Empire Brass Quintet, Smedvig enjoyed a busy career as a soloist with major orchestras, including those in Boston, Chicago and Cincinnati. In 1973, the 19-year-old Smedvig was hired as assistant principal trumpet of the Boston Symphony by music director Seiji Ozawa. Smedvig, then the youngest member of the orchestra, moved up to principal trumpet in 1979.”
Chandos Founder Brian Couzens Changed Classical Music Recording In Britain
“He steered the label through some of the recording industry’s most turbulent times, in the process championing neglected British composers, and regularly winning international awards for audio quality as well as musical excellence.”
The Oscar-Winning Cinematographer For Lord Of The Rings Dies At 59
“Words cannot express the absolute feeling of loss, particularly for his immediate family. Andrew gave us many personal cinema moments, moments that will live with us forever, and yet he has been taken from us way too early.”
Actress Jayne Meadows, Wife/Business Partner/Co-Star To Steve Allen, Dead At 95
“[She] was never as well known as her younger sister, Audrey, who played Alice Kramden on the now-classic Jackie Gleason sitcom The Honeymooners. But she was a versatile and accomplished actress in her own right and a familiar presence on television for years, in dramatic productions, prime-time series and game shows.”
The Woman Who Shaped The Las Vegas Skyline
“Baron Haussmann was lucky enough to be hanging around Paris at the exact moment Napoleon III thought it could do with a refit. Christopher Wren had the good fortune to be alive at the time of Britain’s worst bakery fire. And Betty Willis happened to be working for a sign manufacturer in Las Vegas when the twin forces of modish Googie architecture and the leisure era came together to cut it a singularly brash neon destiny.”