Aurelia Butler

“People came from everywhere to see her shows,” an admirer said — including, on at least one occasion, the ballet superstar Mikhail Baryshnikov.María Benítez, an American dancer and choreographer who, as the founder of a popular Spanish dance troupe, played a major role in making New Mexico a hotbed for flamenco, died on Tuesday at her home in Santa Fe. She was 82.Her death was confirmed by her son, Francisco Benítez, who is her only immediate survivor and who did not specify a cause.Ms. Benítez was born in Minnesota, but she spent most of her childhood in Taos, N.M., where she began taking ballet classes at 10. At 18, she moved to Spain to study Spanish dance. There, in 1965, she met Cecilio Benítez, who was in charge of scenography and lighting at the Fontalba Theater in Madrid. They soon married, and she brought him back to her homeland, settling in New Mexico, where she started teaching and performing Spanish dance at El Nido, a bar in Santa Fe.The Benítezes formed a dance troupe, at first called the María Benítez Spanish Company and then later named the María Benítez Teatro Flamenco. In 1976, they moved to New York and began splitting their time between that city and Santa Fe. The company became the troupe in residence at the Lodge at Santa Fe and performed every summer in a cabaret theater that was modeled on the flamenco tablaos of Spain and was eventually named after her.“She helped make New Mexico a capital of flamenco, not just in the United States but on the global scale,” Nicolasa Chávez, who is the deputy state historian of New Mexico and the author of “The Spirit of Flamenco: From Spain to New Mexico” (2015), said in an interview. “People came from everywhere to see her shows” — including, Ms. Chávez recalled, the ballet superstar Mikhail Baryshnikov.Ms. Benítez and Ángel Muñoz in performance at the Joyce Theater in Manhattan in 1995. Ms. Benítez’s company, the María Benítez Teatro Flamenco, performed regularly at the Joyce in the 1980s and ’90s. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The New York City mayor, Eric Adams, compared himself to a biblical figure who endured suffering, telling parishioners that he was having a “Job moment.”After perhaps the most challenging week of his political career, Mayor Eric Adams visited two Black churches in Brooklyn on Sunday and compared himself to Job, a righteous biblical figure who endured immense suffering but whose blessings were ultimately restored.The mayor never directly addressed the several federal investigations swirling around his administration. Last week, authorities took the phones of his first deputy mayor, his schools chancellor, his deputy mayor for public safety, his police commissioner and his senior adviser.Yet he used his appearances at the Black churches — a friendly environment that the mayor has often used for political messaging — to liken the investigations to the burdens placed on Job.“Job lost it all, and even his wife questioned him. ‘Where’s your faith? Where’s God now?’ His friends rebuked him,” Mr. Adams said from the pulpit at Power and Authority Evangelical Ministry in East New York.“And I wish I could tell you that I had one moment in my life that was a Job moment. But I did not have one. I had many,” the mayor said.The visits to Changing Lives Christian Center and to Power and Authority Evangelical Ministry — just a few blocks apart in an election district where, in the 2021 Democratic primary, Mr. Adams won more than 76 percent of first-round votes — seemed designed to shore up support among his base.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

More from our inbox:Risky Covid Behavior‘Glorious’ Outdoor Dining in New York CityA Librarian’s FightDonald J. Trump, the first former American president to become a felon, is seeking to overturn his conviction and win back the White House.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Judge Pushes Sentencing of Trump to After Election” (front page, Sept. 7):I must disagree with the hand-wringing of my liberal colleagues who lament the fact that Donald Trump won’t be sentenced for his conviction in the hush-money case until after the election.Your article notes that the public will not know before they go to the polls “whether the Republican presidential nominee will eventually spend time behind bars.”With all due respect, so what? The former president was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Those who recoil at the idea of their president being a convicted felon won’t vote for him; those who support him will not change their minds based on the severity of the sentence.Other than being used as a talking point on the left (“he got four years in prison!!”) or on the right (“he got probation — I told you it was no big deal”), what could a sentence now possibly achieve?While no one, including Donald Trump, is above the law, this case is unique in our history. The sentence must be viewed as judicially sound, and for that it cannot become a partisan football, especially this close to an election.Eileen WestPleasantville, N.Y.To the Editor:Donald Trump’s lawyers have consistently maintained that his trials should not go forward because it may affect the 2024 election. Their many motions have contributed to delaying three of the four trials he faces. They have now persuaded Justice Juan Merchan in New York to put off sentencing in the fourth, justified by the judge because of the unique circumstances and timing surrounding the event.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The Allenby crossing, near the West Bank city of Jericho, has been the scene of violence in the past.A gunman killed three Israelis at a sensitive border crossing between Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Sunday, according to the Israeli military.The attack comes amid a surge of violence in the occupied territory since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel prompted the war in Gaza, and at a delicate moment for the relationship between Israel and neighboring Jordan.The gunman arrived at the Israeli-controlled part of the Allenby Bridge crossing from Jordan in a truck on Sunday and opened fire on Israeli security forces, the military said in a statement. The military did not identify the gunman, who was killed at the scene. The three victims were forklift operators who worked at the crossing, according to the Israel Airports Authority.The crossing, near the West Bank city of Jericho, is the main pathway for most Palestinians in the occupied territory to travel abroad, and it has served as an entry point for some aid being delivered to the war-ravaged Gaza Strip.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel described the gunman as “an abhorrent terrorist” and extended his condolences to the families of the victims.It was not immediately clear how the gunman managed to take a weapon into the Israeli-controlled part of the crossing. The Israel Airports Authority said in a statement that the Allenby Bridge was closed, as were two land crossings between Israel and Jordan.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

People in Tajikistan were expecting a government crackdown after Tajik men were arrested and charged with a terrorist attack on a Moscow concert hall in March.But it still seemed excessive to Nilufar, a 27-year-old education professional, when she saw local authorities with scissors outside a K.F.C. in Dushanbe, Tajikistan’s capital, trimming beards that were deemed too long.Excessive, but not so surprising. In the span of a month, Nilufar herself had been stopped three times by the authorities for wearing a hijab in public.“Nowadays, as soon as you go outside, you can actually feel how the raids have intensified,” Nilufar said in a recent interview in Dushanbe, providing only her first name because of fear of retribution.With a population of 10 million, the vast majority of whom are Muslim, Tajikistan has many challenges that counterterrorism experts say make it an incubator for extremism: poverty, poor education, high unemployment and grievances against an autocratic government that severely restricts the practice of religion.In the face of these challenges, critics say, Tajikistan has continued to restrict how Islam can be taught and practiced and increasingly implemented superficial policies regulating head scarves and beard lengths.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The science behind popular methods for improving sleep, and the downsides of caring too much about it.Americans used to say we’d sleep when we were dead. We viewed sleep as a waste of time — something prized by the lazy, and minimized by the industrious.How times have changed. These days, getting in bed early is cool. People, especially those in younger generations, have come to better understand the benefits of a good night’s rest, and many now make sleep a central part of their personal health routines.Experts say this is a good thing: Consistently solid sleep can benefit your heart, brain, immune system and mental health. But our newfound love of sleep is also leading us to strange places. On social media, you can find some people mixing concoctions meant to induce sleep — called “sleepy girl mocktails” — and others trying on sleep aids like mouth tape, nose tape and jaw straps, sometimes all at once. For many, sleep has become something to be optimized, even perfected.Kate Lindsay has a fascinating new story in The Times today that explores this growing fixation — specifically, the large number of people for whom good sleep is not good enough. They are sometimes called “sleepmaxxers.” Kate’s story raises a question I’ve been wondering myself: After so many years of worrying too little about sleep, is it possible some of us have started worrying too much?In today’s newsletter, I’ll walk you through the science behind some popular methods for improving sleep, and the possible downsides of caring too much about it.A “sleepy girl mocktail.”Molly Matalon for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Hundreds of propaganda balloons ferrying trash have landed in South Korea in recent days, where officials say they typically do not pose a threat.Hong Yoongi was walking near South Korea’s Parliament building in Seoul when he spotted the interloper from North Korea.The trespasser on Thursday was a balloon that had floated dozens of miles across the inter-Korean border and the Han River in the South to land near the National Assembly complex. But the authorities were on the case, and on the scene. Some military personnel wore white protective gear, masks and gloves to deal with the trash that had scattered on impact.Over the past five days, North Korea has sent hundreds more drifting toward the South with payloads of trash like waste paper and used plastic bottles. This salvo follows a barrage of thousands of similar North Korean balloons earlier this summer. Pyongyang has said it was provoked by North Korean defectors in the South, who launched their own balloons carrying leaflets criticizing the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and USB sticks with K-pop music and K-dramas.The South’s military has said that North’s balloons do not carry “harmful substances.” But they have become a nuisance, landing in farms, public parks in the capital and in residential areas. In July, some came down inside the grounds of the presidential office in Seoul.Mr. Hong had seen another one of the balloons a few months earlier, near his home in Bundang, south of Seoul. But, he said, “the balloons haven’t affected my daily life at all.”Living next to a nuclear-armed adversary is the reality for millions of South Koreans, who often shrug off provocations from the North.“The most annoying part about the balloons is the countless warning texts I get from the government,” said Ahn Jae-hee, a resident of Seoul.In recent days, officials in the South have sent more than a dozen safety alerts, warning residents to inform the authorities about the balloons and not to touch them. The alerts, sent to mobile phones across the country, give the general location of the balloons.The South’s military has said it waits for the balloons to land before inspecting them, rather than blast them ​— and scatter their​ suspicious payloads ​— from the sky. Seoul has responded by blaring anti-North Korean propaganda and K-pop across loudspeakers stationed near the Demilitarized Zone between the two countries.“The balloons are low-intensity provocations from the North, and South Koreans have no real reason to react to them,” said Wooyeal Paik, the deputy director at the Yonsei Institute for North Korean Studies. So far, he said, there was no indication of espionage, unlike the balloons from China seen over the United States last year, nor did they seem to carry weapons.Propaganda balloons also flew on the Korean Peninsula during the Cold War. Both sides used them to scatter leaflets condemning each other’s governments. Those tactics had largely faded until their revival this year.“The balloons have become the new normal,” Mr. Hong said. More

The conventions are over. The first debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris looms. But for many observers, there’s a highly anticipated event in this election season that’s yet to happen and could occur at any moment: an endorsement announcement from Taylor Swift.Just one day after President Biden announced in July that he was abandoning his re-election bid, the Yale historian Timothy Snyder speculated publicly about the possibility of Ms. Swift endorsing Ms. Harris. The “Will Taylor Swift Endorse Kamala Harris?” headlines soon proliferated. During the Democratic National Convention in August, a rumor surfaced about a supposed mystery guest on the final night — who many excited observers speculated might be Ms. Swift. (In the end, there was no surprise guest.) The countdown clock restarted: When might we expect Ms. Swift’s official endorsement?A better question might be: Why should we care? We already know that celebrity endorsements have limited power to sway a race. In 2004, John Kerry had endorsements from celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio and Larry David, and in 2020, Bernie Sanders had Ariana Grande and Killer Mike’s official support. They lost. Ms. Swift, who endorsed Mr. Biden late in the 2020 race, failed to meaningfully move the needle in 2018, when she backed Phil Bredesen, a Democrat and the former governor of Tennessee, over Marsha Blackburn in a Senate race that Ms. Blackburn won. If celebrities had the amount of persuasive power that some Americans apparently wish they had, a substantial percentage of the population would be steadfast vegan Scientologists by now.The fantasy that a superstar like Ms. Swift might come around on a white horse to sway the electorate is a seductive one — but it’s worth asking what we hope this superstar will save us from. It’s not that Ms. Swift’s fans hope she’ll save them from Donald Trump. It’s more that, as an electorate, we continue to hold out hope that celebrities, through their sheer persuasive charisma, will save us from the hard work of politics itself.It would be exceedingly convenient if a superstar entertainer could make irrelevant the thorny questions of how to persuade voters in key states to vote for your chosen candidate. Ms. Swift’s popularity can’t be discounted, and it cuts through all sorts of American divides. An NBC News poll in 2023 reported that Ms. Swift was regarded favorably or neutrally by nearly 80 percent of registered voters. If she wears a specific pair of shoes out of her house, those shoes might sell out the moment they’re identified. But our political decisions are, and should be, rooted in more practical concerns. Anger among Arab American voters in Michigan over U.S. support for Israel and the war in Gaza, for example, is significant enough that it could cost Democrats the state. The idea that a Swiftie-inclined voter might ignore those concerns simply because of an endorsement from a favorite pop star isn’t just insulting, it’s dystopian.You might be thinking: But what about the ’60s? What about Bob Dylan and “Blowin’ in the Wind”? Didn’t celebrities change the course of history? Protest music did flourish; the cause, though, was another story. In a 2003 interview in the magazine In These Times, Kurt Vonnegut reflected on his experience speaking out against the Vietnam War: “Every artist worth a damn in this country, every serious writer, painter, stand-up comedian, musician, actor and actress, you name it, came out against the thing.” Yet this “laser beam of protest,” Vonnegut said, proved to have “the power of a banana-cream pie three feet in diameter when dropped from a stepladder five-feet high.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More