Baby Jane Dexter, who captivated cabaret audiences with a booming contralto and, after a decade-long hiatus, returned with heartbreaking and healing performances that transformed her tribulations into teaching moments, died on Tuesday in Englewood, N.J. She was 72. Her sister Dallas-Lee Brower said the cause was heart failure and complications of diabetes. Ms. Dexter died at the Lillian Booth Actors Home, the same place her mother, an actress who performed as Jane Dexter, had died. Because they shared a name and were both in show business, Ms. Dexter, when she…

This is neither clear nor sufficiently dramatic. The Bauhaus building, as an avatar of the school, and as a piece of architecture, is one of Gropius’s most important achievements. It deserves to be described in detail and in context, from lamps to carpets to Breuer’s tubular steel furniture (which does get a mention, and a credit). Which publications were begging Ise Gropius, Gropius’s second wife and unpaid publicist, and Lucia Moholy, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s first wife and the school’s unofficial photographer, for information and images? We get a few student accounts…

Since Aretha Franklin died in August, her family has operated with a simple understanding about her estate: Because she was believed to have had no will, Franklin’s assets and income would be divided equally among her four sons, in accordance with Michigan law. That structure, and the peace it preserved within the family, has been upended by the discovery this month of a series of handwritten wills that could significantly alter the estate, replace the executor and change each son’s inheritance. The scrawled documents — found in a locked cabinet…

Hollywood has generated no shortage of memorable male duos to lead its coming-of-age comedies — Ferris and Cameron; Wayne and Garth; Beavis and Butt-head — while failing to keep pace with female-fronted movies. That’s an error that “Booksmart” hopes to correct: this film, which opened Friday, stars Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever as academically accomplished best friends, Molly and Amy, who hope to transcend their studious reputations one night as they hop from the rich kids’ boat party to the drama kids’ murder-mystery dinner to the cool kids’ blowout. “Booksmart,”…

Brooklyn Academy of Music DanceAfrica Festival 2019 In remembrance of the 25th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi, the DanceAfrica festival and its artistic director, Abdel R. Salaam, have dedicated the performance portion of this year’s festival, running through Monday, to that African country. Gia Kourlas talked with Mr. Salaam ahead of the premiere of his new work for the festival, “Rwanda Reborn: The Remix.” More information: bam.org Our TV critic Mike Hale offers 22 new and returning TV shows to put on your calendar this season, from…

As I watched Abdellatif Kechiche’s “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo,” I kept wondering how it would be received by the women on the main jury, including the directors Kelly Reichardt and Alice Rohrwacher. What would they make of the festival giving one of the prestigious 21 slots in the main competition to this three-and-a-half hour ode to the female rear end? In 2013, Kechiche won the Palme d’Or for “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” sharing the prize with its stars, Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos. It was clear then that he…

“I don’t really like work where I need to read the wall text,” the composer David Lang said recently during a visit to the Whitney Museum of American Art. He was walking through the galleries of the 2019 Whitney Biennial, explaining some of his problems with political art — mainly that he doesn’t want to be told what to think. Mr. Lang much prefers a head-scratcher, something that reveals itself after days or even weeks of reflection, and even then only in part. This is the effect he’s hoping to…

There were, it seems, many Halstons. There was the small-town Midwesterner who ascended to the highest levels of fashion, an inspired technician whose bias-cut dresses, masterworks of structure and refined simplicity, altered the look of 20th-century American design. There was the wizard who produced uniforms for United States athletes at the 1976 Olympics, Girl Scout leaders, the crew of Braniff Airlines as well as costumes for Martha Graham. There was also the insecure and yet megalomaniacal control freak obsessed with perfected surfaces. There was the soulful mentor who eventually lost…

I prepared for that scene from the second I received the scripts. I went for a long walk after I read the script because I was so incredibly upset by the scene where Jaime leaves, because of the hurt I knew Brienne would feel. As cliché or as soppy as it sounds, you want the best for your character. You don’t like to see them in pain. And I knew how important it would be to inhabit that emotion, and more important, to inhabit that relationship in that moment. So…

If a good story is told well enough, you want to hear it again. And again. And then at least once more, because you’re sure there’s so much left to discover. That’s certainly the case with Jez Butterworth’s “The Ferryman,” which has been nominated for nine Tony Awards, including Best Play. There are 21 fully defined characters in this pulsing, three-hour drama, and having seen the show four times (first in London), I feel I’ve come to know them all intimately. But on my most recent visit to the Bernard…