Mae Banner died on Friday after a long illness. She was 73 years old. "I was always impressed by how open-minded she was," says Peter Lesser, executive director of the Albany's Egg Center for the Performing Arts. "She appreciated all different types of dance from kids performances to avant garde and modern." In addition to her work at Metroland, Banner wrote for the Saratogian and Glens Falls Chronicle newspapers and taught sociology at the University of Tennessee, SUNY-Cortland and Skidmore College.