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      Melissa Toogood Named New Director of Juilliard’s Dance Division

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      A member of Merce Cunningham’s final company, Toogood brings to the job years of experience as a dancer and educator.The Juilliard School has named Melissa Toogood as dean and director of its dance division, the school announced on Tuesday. Toogood, a Bessie Award-winning dancer who was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in its final years, succeeds Alicia Graf Mack, who is to become the artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Toogood, who is Australian and lives in Sydney, will begin on July 1.“I’ve had many types of experiences and worked with many kinds of dancers and companies, Toogood, 43, said in a phone interview. “I’ve always been reaching for new knowledge.”Damian Woetzel, president of the Juilliard School, called her “one of the extraordinary artists of our time” and said: “I’ve watched her stage, I’ve watched her teach, I’ve watched her develop dancers at all levels, but really focusing on the younger dancers. And I have seen her develop her own leadership in that way that is inspiring.”Toogood, who started teaching at the Cunningham school at the choreographer’s request, continued to dance in New York after Cunningham’s company performed for the last time in 2011. “I had a really intense freelance career, which is challenging and uncertain, and I hope to prepare young people for all of those outcomes,” she said. “Because I can speak to it personally.”Toogood stages Cunningham dances and has performed with companies and choreographers including Kyle Abraham, Michelle Dorrance, Jamar Roberts and Pam Tanowitz, with whom she has had an 18-year collaboration.At Juilliard, she hopes to broaden her students’ understanding of the roles of art and artists. “I really think of art as an act of service, whether to an idea or a community or a work,” she said. “If a choreographer just makes you walk across the back of the room, they wouldn’t put that in a piece if it wasn’t important. I want them to leave as comprehensive thinkers and understanding that there are no small parts and that kind of connection to each other and the work and every role you play, whether it’s seemingly important to you at that time or not, is important.”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

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      Stars Hit the 2025 Met Gala After-Parties, From Jenna Ortega to Lisa

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      This year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s signature gala welcomed a host of top hats, pinstripes and impeccable suiting (and a fashionably late, pregnant Rihanna) in celebration of the Costume Institute’s new exhibition about the history of Black dandy fashion.But it’s the after-parties where politicians, athletes, celebrities and influencers, many of whom did not appear on the blue carpet, let loose.On Monday night, as it continued to rain, celebrities dispersed across the city to toast martinis and mull over the moment. Here’s a sampling of who was out and what they wore.Casa CiprianiA Mayoral Rendezvous at the SeaportTylaAmir Hamja for The New York TimesMayor Eric Adams arrived at Casa Cipriani, a private club in Lower Manhattan, for the nightlife impresario Richie Akiva’s annual Met Gala after-party, just before 1 a.m.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

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      Soprano Patricia Racette to Lead Opera Theater of St. Louis

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      Patricia Racette, who has a recent history of performing in and directing productions with the company, will begin as its artistic director this fall.The soprano Patricia Racette has performed on some of the world’s biggest stages, but she has long felt a special connection to Opera Theater of St. Louis, where she made her debut in 1993.Now Racette, 59, will deepen her ties to St. Louis: She will lead Opera Theater as its next artistic director, the company announced on Tuesday.Racette, who has directed productions for the company and overseen its young artist program for six years, said she was excited by the challenge of working to keep opera fresh and relevant.“It feels like a very natural evolution for me,” she said. “I feel we all have a stake in this.”She begins her tenure in October and will succeed James Robinson, who departed last year to lead Seattle Opera as general and artistic director.Racette said she would build on Opera Theater’s reputation for experimentation. The company, founded in 1976, has given the premiere of works like Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” which later became the first work by a Black composer to be presented by the Metropolitan Opera. She said that she hoped to work with a variety of contemporary composers, including Kevin Puts, Jonathan Dove and Missy Mazzoli.“I have a perspective and passion for new works, and I’m going to enjoy applying that perspective and passion again on the other side of the curtain,” she said.Racette, who made her debut at the Met in 1995, is known for her portrayals of Puccini heroines. She has also ventured into other genres, including cabaret, which she said she hoped to bring to St. Louis. She said opera companies should not fear crossover repertoire.“These are our stories and traditions,” she said. “It’s an opportunity for accessibility, relevance and impact.”Many opera companies, including Opera Theater of St. Louis, are grappling with rising costs and the lingering effects of the pandemic. The company has benefited from a robust endowment, which is currently valued at about $100 million, and is exploring building a new home at the former headquarters of a shoe company in Clayton, a suburb of St. Louis. (Its theater is in another suburb, Webster Groves.)Racette said she was not daunted by financial challenges.“We’re just going to have to get more creative,” she said. “The arts in troubling times are more important than ever.” More

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      Trump’s Wishes Aside, Censoring Racial History May Prove Difficult

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      Late last month, when two federal grants to the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana were rescinded, the Trump administration seemed to be following through on its promise to root out what President Trump called “improper ideology” in cultural institutions focused on Black history.After all, the plantation’s mission was to show visitors what life was truly like for the enslaved, contrary to the watered-down Black history that the president seemed to back.Then just as quickly, the grants were restored a few weeks later, the Whitney Plantation’s executive director said in an interview.Because the money had already been approved, “maybe it was an exposure for lawsuits,” the executive director, Ashley Rogers, said, “but who knows?”Ever since Mr. Trump issued an executive order in March decrying cultural institutions that were trying to “rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth,” sites like the Whitney Plantation have lived with such uncertainty. An order specifically targeting the Smithsonian Institution tasked Vice President JD Vance and other White House officials with “seeking to remove improper ideology from such properties.”But reversals like the one in Louisiana and actions by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture seem to indicate some misgivings about the president’s order. They also show that putting historical knowledge back into the bottle after decades of reckoning with the nation’s racist history will be more difficult than the administration believes.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

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      Why Democrats Joined Republicans to Block a California Climate Policy

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      Some said they worried that California’s planned ban on gas-powered vehicles would raise the price of cars. Another cited “intense and misleading lobbying” by the oil industry.Representative Lou Correa, a Democrat who represents parts of Orange County, Calif., drives a hybrid car and wants the federal government to tackle climate change.But he joined 34 other Democrats last week to help Republicans repeal his state’s landmark requirement that all new vehicles sold in California be electric or otherwise nonpolluting by 2035. In doing so, he helped President Trump and the Republican majority to undercut the nation’s transition away from gasoline-powered cars.“I don’t like giving Trump a win,” Mr. Correa said in an interview after the vote. But electric vehicles remain expensive and impractical in his heavily blue-collar district, he said.“We just finished an election where every poll I’m seeing, everybody I talk to, says, ‘You guys need to listen to the working class, the middle class people,” Mr. Correa said. “I’m listening to my constituents who are saying ‘don’t kill us.’”The 246-to-164 vote in the House stunned environmentalists, who said they were struggling to understand why nearly three dozen Democrats voted to kill one of the most ambitious climate policies in the country. For the past few years, Democrats have overwhelmingly voted for stronger policies to tackle global warming.Some wonder whether that unity is starting to fray in the face of intense lobbying and worries about rising prices amid Mr. Trump’s trade wars.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

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      India and UK Strike Trade Deal Amid Trump’s Tariff Upheaval

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      The two countries signed a deal three years after negotiations began to strengthen alliances in what the British prime minister called a “new era” of trade.Britain and India agreed to a trade deal on Tuesday, strengthening economic ties between two of the world’s largest economies amid President Trump’s upheaval of the global trade system.The deal, which the British government said would increase bilateral trade by £25.5 billion ($34 billion), comes three years after the negotiations began. Intense talks between Jonathan Reynolds, Britain’s business and trade secretary, and Piyush Goyal, India’s commerce minister, took place last week to finalize the outstanding issues.The British government said India had reduced 90 percent of tariffs on goods, and within a decade most of those would become tariff free. Duties on British whiskey and gin would be halved, to 75 percent, and eventually be lowered to 40 percent. India will also reduce its car tariffs, which exceed 100 percent, to 10 percent under a quota. Britain, in turn, reduced tariffs on clothes, footwear and food products including frozen prawns.Last year, trade in goods and services between India and Britain, the world’s fifth and sixth largest economies, totaled £42.6 billion, according to British data.The trade agreement comes as many countries are seeking to bolster alliances and trade flows after Mr. Trump sent shock waves through the global economy by announcing, and then pausing, high tariffs on dozens of countries. The uncertainty created by the policy whiplash is expected to dampen investment and economic growth around the world.Officials in Britain, which squeezed out 0.1 percent economic growth in the final quarter of last year, have tried to increase investment from foreign companies and sign more trade deals. Other negotiations, including those with South Korea, are continuing.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

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      Trump’s Idea to Turn Alcatraz Back Into a Prison Draws Criticism From Tourists

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      Boatloads of tourists traipsed around Alcatraz Island on Monday morning and peered into tiny prison cells, learning about the most notorious inmates who stayed there — and the ones who tried to escape.The tour was standard at the revered San Francisco attraction, save for one topic that simply could not be avoided in the conversations echoing off the old cellblock walls.Can you believe that President Trump wants to convert Alcatraz back into a federal prison?The morning tour groups were full of international travelers, and many of them had received phone alerts about Trump’s plan or read news reports over breakfast. Some wondered if they might actually be among the last visitors allowed to wander the island. But nobody seemed to think the idea was nearly as brilliant as Mr. Trump thought it was.“I thought it was a joke,” said Philipp Neumann, who was visiting from Germany. “It’s a ruin, isn’t it, more or less?”A ruin, yes, with some buildings deteriorating so badly they no longer have roofs or complete walls. The cells have broken toilets, if they have any at all, with no running water or sewage system.The exterior walls of the cellblocks are so weak that they are reinforced with netting to prevent chunks of concrete from crumbling onto tourists’ heads. Bird deposits coat much of the island. All supplies from food to fuel must be brought in by boat.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

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      Anna Sawai Breaks Down Her Dior Met Gala Look

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      The actress caps off a winning awards show season by changing up her look.After a series of head-turning red carpet looks during this year’s awards season, Anna Sawai is ready to bring her style to her first Met Gala.The “Shogun” actress, who won Emmy, Golden Globe and SAG awards for best actress in a drama television series, grabbed the attention of the fashion world in a series of gowns that tastefully exposed skin and pooled elegantly around her feet.So, even though she was not quite expecting to get an invite to fashion’s biggest event so quickly, it did seem like a fitting final stop on her whirlwind red carpet tour.“The Met is the place where you can have the most fun,” Ms. Sawai, 32, said on a video call from a hotel room on the Upper East Side on Sunday, “because it’s a heightened version of the red carpets that we get to do.”For the event, Ms. Sawai opted for a white blazer and trousers from Dior. She’ll top the look with a wide-brimmed hat by Stephen Jones — tilted ever so slightly to cover her right eye for a “mysterious look,” she said. In the ensemble, she said she felt like she was tapping into a new side of herself: “I feel like every carpet, I’ve only worn dresses.”“This is going to be the first time that I’m getting to kind of channel my androgynous side,” she added. “And I’m really excited to pay respect to Black dandyism.”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