Kiki Shepard, 1951 – 2026

Dancer and actress Kiki Shepard, 74, died of a heart attack on March 16. Shepard danced with the D. C. Repertory Dance Company, and acted with the Delacourt Summer Shakespearean Festival in New York. She appeared on Broadway in Bubbling Brown Sugar, Comin' Uptown, Reggae, Your Arms Too Short to Box With God, and Porgy and Bess, and in such movies and TV shows as The Wiz, The Cotton Club, A Rage in Harlem, A Different World, Baywatch, Thunder in Paradise, NYPD Blue, Everybody Hates Chris, and Grey’s Anatomy, Shepard was perhaps best known as a cohost (for 16 years) of Showtime at the Apollo. She recalled Apollo Theater owner Percy Sutton telling her, “As long as you want this job, Kiki, you will have it. Because you represent that little dark-skin black girl that’s out there that thinks that she won’t get those opportunities. There’s no question that you are a black woman, you have class, you have character, you speak well, you represent everything that a beautiful, strong, young black woman in America should be.”