Category: people

“Ballet is one of the most unnatural things you can do to your body. You are always pushing your joints to their extremes, constantly forcing your limbs into positions they are not supposed to be in. I was often in agony, and in constant fear of getting injured. My back was so fragile I never wanted to pick up my daughters in case it just went.”

“Meet the newest Chicago actor: Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Breyer will be appearing as the Ghost in ‘Hamlet’ in Hyde Park on Friday, with an encore presentation slated for Saturday. It’s part of this weekend’s ‘Shakespeare and the Law’ conference at the University of Chicago Law School.”

“Actor Alec Baldwin says he’ll travel to Hanoi with the New York Philharmonic when it makes its Vietnam debut in October. The star of NBC’s Emmy-award winning comedy ’30 Rock’ begins a side gig this fall as the new host of the national radio broadcast ‘The New York Philharmonic This Week.'”

“Michael Kaiser – president of the Kennedy Center, international arts management/rescue guru and compelling advocate for preserving artistic quality even in the face of financial meltdown – is the 2009 recipient of the George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Music in America. … He joins a starry roster of recipients, that since 1980, has included the likes of Leonard Bernstein, Quincy Jones and Eubie Blake.”

“She wrote among much else one celebrated novel … She personally saved at least a dozen people from the French revolutionary guillotine. She reinvented Parisian millinery with her astonishing multicolored turbans. She dramatically dismissed Jane Austen as ‘vulgaire.’ She snubbed Napoleon at a reception. … And she once completely outtalked the poet Coleridge at a soirée in Mayfair. For these things alone she should be remembered.”

“Lynn Nottage, who won the Pulitzer Prize in April for her play ‘Ruined,’ and Quincy Tyler Bernstine, an actress in the play’s current production in New York, will be in Washington on Wednesday to join activities linked to United States Senate hearings on rape and violence against women in so-called conflict zones, such as Congo and Sudan.”

“The playwrights Edward Albee and Romulus Linney, the actors Robert Duvall and Harris Yulin, and Foote’s children were among those who recalled his pungent wit and wry humor, his stubbornness and his courtly gentleness.” Albee told the assembled: “Horton never wrote a character in any of his plays. Horton only wrote people.”

“Award-winning poet Craig Arnold, who went missing in Japan in late April, is presumed to have died after a fall, his employer, the University of Wyoming, announced Friday. … The American search team that arrived tracked Arnold to the edge of ‘a high and dangerous cliff, and there is virtually no possibility he could have survived the fall,’ the release explained.”

“He was well-known throughout Greece for his puppet theater stories revolving around the hunchbacked character Karagiozi, who came to represent the virtues and vices of the average Greek. Cunning and rebellious, Karagiozi was often shown as a liar and petty thief who wormed his way out of difficult situations.”

Justin Davidson: “There are many people – and Daniel Barenboim is probably among them – who consider Daniel Barenboim the world’s most significant classical musician. The conductor and pianist projects three distinct impressions: that he is used to being the most distinguished person in the room; that he has something at once profound and self-evident to say; and that, having said it, he has to leave urgently.”