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Even in a normal year, the competition’s unique traditions can be confusing to newcomers. Here’s what you need to know.LONDON — The Eurovision Song Contest is the world’s biggest music competition: a fiercely competitive, always surprising, sometimes surreal Olympics of song. Broadcast live across the world, the competition has taken place since 1956, making it one of the longest running television shows of all time. More
Tenderoni outside of a barbershop in the North Center neighborhood of Chicago.Credit…Evan Jenkins for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexThe Great ReadDrag Kings Are Ready to RuleThe blurring of gender boundaries has allowed for more freedom in online pageants — and soon, it’s hoped, back in the clubs.Tenderoni outside of a barbershop in the North Center neighborhood of Chicago.Credit…Evan Jenkins for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyMarch 4, 2021Updated 4:23 p.m. ETIt should not be a big hairy deal that a 32-year-old Chicago-based drag performer named Tenderoni will be vying in a virtual talent competition on Sunday, and yet it is truly a reason to wig out.The pageant is called Drag Queen of the Year 2021. But despite a penchant for lip-syncing to Missy Elliott, Tenderoni isn’t a drag queen. He’s a drag king, which, generally speaking means a performer born female, who takes the stage in men’s clothes. He is what was once called a “male impersonator,” penciled-on mustache, compressed chest and all.Tenderoni, his creator says, “is a mash-up of Michael Jackson, Bobby Brown, Prince, George Michael and Boy George.”It’s drag, it’s cosplay and, he hopes, it’s enough to win.While androgynous costume in this direction is hardly new — Marlene Dietrich famously set libidos afire in top hat and tuxedo in the 1930 movie classic “Morocco” — drag kings tend to be the lesser-exposed and underappreciated segment of drag. Casual fans who get their drag from TV or with a side of waffles at brunch, in fact, may never even have heard of this particular practice.“In the past, many of our audience members didn’t understand the concept of drag kings,” said Chad Kampe, a producer who has been staging popular drag brunches in Minneapolis since 2012. “We often got questions.”Chief among them: “What the heck is a drag king?”But now that drag has gone mainstream — the Season 13 premiere of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” on VH1 on Jan. 1 drew 1.3 million viewers, its highest-rated episode ever — performers who exaggerate and explore the tropes of manhood are getting a closer look.Although a king has not yet been featured on “Drag Race” (a trans man named Gottmik who performs in female drag has), drag kings at last are getting more exposure elsewhere, and surprisingly, the pandemic may have helped.The closing of bars and restaurants has hit most performers’ pocketbooks very hard, but the mandated move to online entertainment may have helped level the playing field.“Covid made everyone have to go digital,” said Tenderoni, who developed his act at Berlin, a club in Chicago. “That has made the audience for all kinds of drag so much bigger. I’ve done shows and heard, ‘I’m from Brazil,’ ‘I’m from London.’ It has opened the floodgates.”‘A Seat at the Table’The Drag Queen of the Year pageant takes such diversity as its mandate.“We’ve worked with trans men and trans women and drag kings and all these different kinds of performers our whole lives,” said Alaska 5000, 35, the “RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars” winner who founded the competition with a fellow drag queen, Lola LaCroix, in 2019.Why, they wondered one sleepless night flying home from a gig, shouldn’t such performers all compete against and celebrate each other? “Everyone has something to prove, and everyone brings so much,” Alaska 5000 said. “What they do isn’t just valid, it’s fierce.”To that end, Tenderoni will go up against seven other disparate drag artists — some bearded, burly and burlesque; some Jessica Rabbit curvaceous; some known for their lingerie-clad muscles — for the Drag Queen of the Year crown in a show to be seen on the Sessions Live platform.Whether he wins or not, it doesn’t really matter. “This gives us a seat at the table,” said Tenderoni, who started performing in drag less than five years ago. “Drag is a buffet. I don’t need to be the main course — I just want to be included.”By appearing that night, he will earn a spot in a brotherhood of drag kings that, under various names, has been around for centuries.Male mimics Vesta Tilley and Hetty King were widely celebrated on British music hall stages of the 19th century. Stormé DeLarverie, a Stonewall activist who preferred the term “male impersonator” to “drag king,” passed for a man while touring America with the Jewel Box Revue in the ’50s and ’60s.In the ’80s, the comedian and actress Lily Tomlin played Tommy Velour, a Las Vegas lounge lizard with more chest hair than talent. He lives on, in all his hirsute glory, on YouTube.In a June 2000 episode of “Sex and the City” titled “Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl…,” prim Charlotte York (Kristin Davis) is photographed in a mustache and a man’s suit, and her portrait is featured in a gallery show. The show used real drag kings, but only as background players.More recently, “Vida,” a Starz show about two Mexican-American sisters, featured the drag king Vico Suave, the creation of Vico Ortiz, a nonbinary actor. Tanya Saracho, the show’s creator, said she wanted to include drag kings in the cast because they’re an “underrepresented initiative” in queer entertainment. “The artistry is there,” she said, asking, “Why are they not part of the mainstream wave that’s happening right now with drag?”Twenty-five years ago, fans had to venture far beyond their living rooms to underground clubs late at night to see drag kings perform. In New York back then, that meant a watering hole like Flamingo East on Second Avenue, in an East Village much rougher than it is today.Murray Hill with barber Jack Khaimchayev, right at Model Barber in Brooklyn, N.Y.Credit…Isak Tiner for The New York TimesGoing for the clean close shave.Credit…Isak Tiner for The New York Times“Those early days in the clubs were electric, uncharted and riveting,” said Murray Hill, 49, a New York comedian known as the “hardest-working middle-aged man in show business” since his emergence as a young drag king in 1995. His earliest drag performance was as a “fat sweaty Elvis,” to use his words, at 2 a.m. on a Sunday at a party called Club Casanova at a venue called Cake on Avenue C. “It felt very underground,” he said.Mo B. Dick, 55, the drag king who ran Club Casanova before decamping for the West Coast in 2004, said that in that era, “it was more about drag king realness. You were passing as a male.” Kings were spirit-gumming their own hair clippings to their chins and chests in the name of entertainment. The illusion worked well enough, but such makeovers would be considered underwhelming today.Thanks to the special-effects-grade prosthetics and precision paint jobs seen on “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” drag performers of every stripe have had to up their game. “Now when folks go to their local drag bar, they expect to see what they saw on television,” said Mr. Kampe, the Minneapolis producer, which encourages artists “to continually invest in new looks.”Mr. Dick thinks standards have gone up. “These kids today, I’m pleased at how extraordinary they are,” he said. “Now, there’s more artistry and more makeup. Being a king is more ‘draggy.’ The showmanship is phenomenal.” At a good brunch, he noted, “Performers now go through three or four costume changes during a one-hour show.”A 2018 all-drag-kings tribute to the boy bands Backstreet Boys and ’NSync, held at a venue in Minneapolis called the Union Rooftop, was so popular that Mr. Kampe said he had to do six shows to meet the demand.Mr. Dick recently created a website, dragkinghistory.com, to help new audiences learn about the art form’s past. On Feb. 21, he celebrated veteran drag kings with an international online event called “Drag King Legends.” The pay-what-you-can show featured stalwart performers like Fudgie Frottage of San Francisco, Flarington King of Toronto and Ken Vegas of Washington, D.C. All have been drag kings for 25 years or more.Shades of Elvis: Mo B. Dick at home by the pool.Credit…Michelle Groskopf for The New York TimesMo B. Dick wipes down a dirt bike at home.Credit…Michelle Groskopf for The New York TimesMr. Hill, who is perhaps the RuPaul of drag kings, headlined the night. In the coming months, he will appear in roles on three high-profile TV series: Amy Schumer’s “Love, Beth” on Hulu, Bridget Everett’s “Somebody Somewhere” on HBO, and the American reboot of the British sitcom “This Country,” on which he will play a magician. “A regular character on TV is something I’ve wanted since I started over 25 years ago,” he said.Paul Feig, the producer-director of “Bridesmaids,” “Freaks and Geeks” and “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist,” wrote in an email that “I’ve been a huge fan of Murray’s for a while. When Jenny Bicks and I sold ‘This Country’ to Fox, one of my first goals was to get him on it. I love talented people who have their own unique take on the world and will do whatever I can to get them opportunities to shine.”Most drag kings, though, are still fighting an uphill battle. “Kings are rising in popularity in many large American cities, but they aren’t provided with the same opportunities as queens,” Mr. Kampe said.Live shows often are booked by male promoters who may not appreciate drag king artistry. “Often, a show will feature a dozen queens and only one king,” Mr. Kampe said. “Drag kings face as much discrimination in the workplace as women, and they often earn less.”Another obstacle, as Mr. Dick noted, is that audiences “don’t necessarily see the comedy in a woman putting on a suit. Female masculinity is still scary to some people.” There’s less inherent theatricality and, up until now, less glitz to performing in male drag, too; plus, people are a lot more accustomed in everyday American life to seeing women in pants than men in skirts. “Doing a male character is so much harder than doing a female character,” Alaska 5000 said. “Men are just not as exciting to look at.”‘Reigning in the Darkness’But the most exciting drag kings are making do, spectacularly.Landon Cider, 39, a performer in Long Beach, Calif., for instance, was the first drag king to win an American reality competition when, in 2019, he took home the title of “America’s Next Drag Super Monster” on “Dragula,” a Netflix series that plays like a goth version of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” Wearing horror-movie-grade makeup of his own design, Mr. Cider ate live spiders on one episode and dressed as a blood-splattered, axe-wielding tin man from Oz on another. He was the lone king to compete on the show, but he nailed it in all his gory glory.“We’ve been reigning in the darkness this entire time,” he said. “Now we have more light shining down on us. If audiences think they’re just getting a lesbian in their dad’s clothes, I take that as a challenge to show them.”An online pageant isn’t “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” But it’s not nothing.Wang Newton at The Norwood club in Manhattan.Credit…Celeste Sloman for The New York TimesMr. Newton combs his mustache.Credit…Celeste Sloman for The New York Times“Seeing drag kings perform on these platforms and do well is another chip in the misogyny of the drag community,” said Hugo Grrrl, 29, a performer in New Zealand who in 2018 won a televised drag competition called “House of Drag.”Mr. Grrrl, who has gone from a self-described “mustachioed transvestite” to a trans man in the years since his win, said: “Audiences are learning that drag kinging is just as transformative and artistic and entertaining as drag queen art forms. They’re wearing just as much makeup, glitter and shapewear.”With names like Vigor Mortis, Spikey Van Dykey, Jack Rabid and Freddie Prinze Charming, the latest drag kings were being nurtured in out-of-the-way venues in cities around the world, ones not unlike those clubs of the ’90s. In New York, performance collectives like Brooklyn’s Switch ’N Play, led by the burlesque-inspired “sex symbol” K. James; Night Gowns, a series of events run by Sasha Velour, a “Drag Race” winner; and Cake Boys, out of Queens, have been fertile ground.Typically, younger performers blur whatever is left of gender lines. As Mr. Grrrl put it, “Right now, if you don’t have an ‘AFAB performer,’” — meaning a cisgender woman, trans man or nonbinary person dressed as a drag queen — “or a drag king in your lineup, you’re doing it wrong.” The future of drag, he said, “is going to be a big old mess and that’s a wonderful, glamorous, fantastic thing. We’re all finding new ways to spread joy through the power of sequins.”When Damien D’Luxe, a 34-year-old drag king in Minneapolis, takes the stage, he may mime a medley of “Hooked on a Feeling” and “Crocodile Rock” dressed as Captain Hook. But he does so wearing high-heeled boots and false eyelashes that Bianca Del Rio would kill for. He has been known to wear a powdered wig and floppy lace cuffs straight out of Falco’s 1986 MTV video for “Rock Me, Amadeus” while lip-syncing to “The Barber of Seville” in Italian.When you’re a drag king, it can take that much effort to get noticed.“More kings are recognizing that passing as a dude, although that takes a lot of work and dedication and talent, isn’t getting the spotlight,” Mr. Cider said. “The kingdom has evolved into vivid colors and costumes and headpieces and glitter because that’s how you stand out in a crowd.” Especially, he said, when you’re on a bill with a gag-worthy gaggle of 7-foot-tall drag queens.“We can’t compete in the Glamazon department,” said Wang Newton, 42, an Asian-American New York drag king who, in his act, tests the boundaries of political correctness while wrapped in vintage Vegas swagger. But that doesn’t mean drag kings can’t compete. “We’re not about death drops. We’re our own thing,” Mr. Newton said. “It’s a whole new bag and we can explore that now.”And an increasing number of performers are doing so.“I’m watching girls and performers of all genders who maybe five years ago would have gone into burlesque who now are seeing drag kinging as the ultimate art form,” Mr. Grrrl said. “It’s a very interesting space to be in. Masculinity is something that deserves to be made fun of.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBrayden Smith, Five-Time ‘Jeopardy!’ Champion, Dies at 24The five-time “Jeopardy!” champion Brayden Smith died unexpectedly at 24, his mother said on Twitter on Friday.Credit…Jeopardy!Feb. 13, 2021, 5:44 p.m. ETBrayden Smith, a voracious reader and former captain of his high school quiz bowl team who became a five-time “Jeopardy!” champion on some of the last shows hosted by Alex Trebek, died on Feb. 5 in Las Vegas. He was 24.Mr. Smith’s death was confirmed in an online obituary. It did not list a cause of death. His mother, Deborah Smith, said on Twitter that her son had died “unexpectedly.”Mr. Smith, she said, had achieved a lifelong dream by winning “Jeopardy!” as a contestant on some of the final shows hosted by Mr. Trebek before Mr. Trebek died in November at age 80 after a battle with cancer.Over six shows, Mr. Smith won five times, earning $115,798 and the nickname Alex’s Last Great Champion, the obituary said. Mr. Smith said he had been looking forward to competing on the show’s Tournament of Champions against his “trivia idols.”“‘Jeopardy!’ is so much better than anything that I could have even imagined,” Mr. Smith said in a video released by “Jeopardy!” last month. “Every moment since I last was on the studio lot has been a moment that I’ve been wanting to get back on there.”Mr. Smith said on the video that he had been moved by Mr. Trebek’s perseverance on the show since Mr. Trebek’s announcement in March 2019 that he had learned he had Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.“Now everybody knows that he is ailing, and to put on a brave face and go out there every day and continue to give America and the world some good cheer, especially this year, was really a testament to how great of a person he was,” Mr. Smith said.Mr. Trebek was clearly impressed with Mr. Smith’s knowledge of trivia, telling the other contestants after one of Mr. Smith’s wins that they had played well, but “you ran into Billy Buzz Saw — and he took no prisoners.”Brayden Andrew Smith was born in Henderson, Nev., on Sept. 6, 1996, the second of four sons of Scott and Deborah (Rudy) Smith.At Liberty High School in Henderson, he was a National Merit Scholar semifinalist and led the Quiz Bowl team to back-to-back state runner-up finishes. For his outstanding play, he earned a college scholarship.He graduated last year from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, with a degree in economics and had planned to become a lawyer in the federal government. He had recently served as an intern at the Cato Institute in Washington, researching criminal justice reform.“The JEOPARDY! family is heartbroken by the tragic loss of Brayden Smith,” the show said on Twitter. “He was kind, funny and absolutely brilliant.”Jack Begg contributed research.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFanny Waterman, Doyenne of the Leeds Piano Competition, Dies at 100A British pianist and teacher, she helped establish one of the world’s most important piano showcases and then presided over it for decades.Fanny Waterman in 2010. Convinced that Leeds, her native city, was worthy of an international piano competition, she pushed hard to establish one and served as its guiding force for more than half a century.Credit…Andy ManningDec. 26, 2020, 3:31 p.m. ETFanny Waterman, the British pianist and teacher who co-founded the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition and oversaw it as chairwoman and artistic director for more than five decades, died on Dec. 20 at a care home in Ilkley, Yorkshire. She was 100.Her death was announced by the Leeds competition.The idea of presenting an international music competition in 1960s Leeds, a gritty industrial city in northern England, seemed risky. But Ms. Waterman, a Leeds native who learned perseverance from her poor Russian immigrant father, believed in the vitality of her hometown and was certain she could draw support for the venture.“I dreamt it up one night, and I was so excited that I woke up my husband,” she said in a 2010 interview with The Jewish Chronicle. “He was born in London,” Ms. Waterman added, “and he said: ‘It won’t work in Leeds. It has to be in a capital city.’”But Ms. Waterman talked up the idea and raised funds from patrons, banks, businesses, the Leeds City Council and the University of Leeds. Her husband, Geoffrey de Keyser, a doctor, became a founder of the competition, along with her good friend Marion Harewood, a pianist who was then the Countess of Harewood (and was later married to the Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe). The two friends also wrote “Me and My Piano,” a series of piano lesson books that remain top sellers in Britain.From the start, Ms. Waterman conceived of the Leeds competition, which is held every three years, as a means to foster musical values she had cultivated as a performer and teacher, placing musicianship, artistry and sensitivity over technical bravura.Music is a “wonderful discipline,” she said in the 2010 interview. “You can’t play a note without thinking, how loud, how soft, how soon, how late. It makes you think carefully and it gives you judgment.”Over the years the competition joined the ranks of the world’s elite contests, including the Van Cliburn, Tchaikovsky and Chopin. Such competitions are major springboards for careers in music, often an obligatory stop on a young performer’s progress; they have also come in for criticism for quashing creativity and individuality.As with all competitions, the administrators of the Leeds contest point not just to the list of their outstanding winners — among them Michel Dalberto, Jon Kimura Parker, Ian Hobson and Alessio Bax — as proof of success in identifying young talent, but also to finalists who became major artists. That group of luminaries includes Mitsuko Uchida, Andras Schiff, Lars Vogt and Louis Lortie.The first Leeds competition took place in 1963, with the composer and conductor Arthur Bliss as chairman of an eminent jury. It was an immediate success, with 94 entrants from 23 countries, though with one potentially embarrassing result: The winner was one of Ms. Waterman’s students, Michael Roll, raising the perception of favoritism. Ms. Waterman later said that he had deserved to win, and that the judges had strongly supported him.Ms. Waterman backstage with the cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, left foreground, and the pianist Murray Perahia, right foreground, in 1972, the year Mr. Perahia won the Leeds competition.Credit…Leeds International Piano CompetitionFor the third competition, in 1969, Ms. Waterman asserted herself after the Romanian pianist Radu Lupu placed fourth in the second round, which meant he would not advance to the finals. Deeply impressed by Mr. Lupu’s playing, Ms. Waterman insisted that the number of finalists be increased from three to five and vowed not to organize another competition unless he made the cut. She got her way, and Mr. Lupu wound up winning and went on to a distinguished career.The competition garnered wide attention in 1972 when the American pianist Murray Perahia, then 25, won first prize.In the last round, with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the other two finalists, Craig Sheppard and Eugene Indjic, also Americans, played Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto, a work that many young pianists have used to prove their virtuosic mettle.Mr. Perahia, already an audience favorite from performances of works by Schumann, Mozart, Mendelssohn and others, instead chose to play Chopin’s intimate, elegantly brilliant Piano Concerto No. 1 in the finals. He prevailed despite suffering terrible anxiety under the pressure, earning a cash prize of $1,850 and numerous recital and concerto engagements.Ms. Waterman was born on March 22, 1920, in Leeds, the second child of Mary (Behrman) Waterman and Meyer Waterman (the family name was originally Wasserman). Her mother was an English-born daughter of Russian immigrant Jews. Her father, born in Ukraine, was a skilled jeweler.Though the family struggled financially, her parents came up with enough money to provide young Fanny with piano lessons once her talent became clear. She practiced on an old upright piano and studied with a local teacher, while her brother, Harry, took violin lessons.At 18, she became a scholarship student at the Royal College of Music in London, studying with Cyril Smith. She performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in 1941 with the Leeds Symphony Orchestra, the same year she met Dr. de Keyser, then a young medical student, whom she would marry in 1944. With the birth of her first child, Robert, in 1950, Ms. Waterman decided to devote herself to teaching.Robert de Keyser survives her, as do another son, Paul, a violin teacher, and six granddaughters. Her husband died in 2001.Once the Leeds Competition got going, Dr. de Keyser became intimately involved, both in recommending lists of repertory and in writing up rules. “He was a doctor, but his knowledge of music was second to nobody,” Ms. Waterman said in 2010.In 1966 Ms. Waterman and her husband bought Woodgarth, a magnificent eight-bedroom Victorian house in Oakwood, a suburb of Leeds. She kept two fine pianos in its spacious drawing room, where she taught, made plans for the competition and presided over lively musical soirees that included guests like the composer Benjamin Britten and the tenor Peter Pears, as well as Prime Minister Edward Heath. Ms. Waterman sold the house this year.She was appointed dame commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2005. In 2015, at 95, she retired from the Leeds Competition. Yet in an interview with the BBC five years later, she revealed that she had stepped aside unwillingly.“I think they were misguided,” she said of the unnamed people who wanted her out, “because I had many, many years more to give of my own passion, my own knowledge and everything.”Still, she expressed pride over her accomplishments. “I do hope and pray,” she said, “that in another 100 years our competition will have the reputation it’s got now.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
