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    Alicia Keys, LaChanze and Billy Porter Celebrate Black Theater

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    The stage stars were among more than 600 people who turned out for an evening of dinner and performances to benefit Black Theater United.LaChanze was in the mood to celebrate.“I am so ready to party,” the actress, wearing a sequined red gown with a bold red lip, said on the red carpet before the second annual Black Theater United gala at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in Midtown Manhattan on Monday night.LaChanze is the president and a founding member of Black Theater United, a nonprofit that aims to combat racism in the theater community. She was one of more than 600 people — including the singer Alicia Keys, the actor Billy Porter, the actress Kristin Chenoweth and the pop-classical musician Josh Groban — who gathered at the grand event space for a live auction, dinner and performance on a night when most Broadway shows were dark.The gala raised money for the nonprofit founded by an all-star team of Black theater artists, including the Tony Award winners Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Phylicia Rashad and LaChanze in the summer of 2020 in response to the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis.Mr. Mitchell remembered a call at the time with Ms. McDonald, the director Schele Williams and LaChanze. “They just started saying, ‘We’ve got to do something,’” he said.The organization now offers programs for aspiring young Black theater artists including student internships, a panel and discussion series, a musical theater scholarship and a program that aims to educate artists of color about designing for the theater.From left: Nichelle Lewis, Stephanie Mills and Sydney Terry performing “Home” from “The Wiz.” Ms. Mills was the original Dorothy in the 1975 production of the musical, a retelling of the classic “Wizard of Oz” story.Nina Westervelt 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

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      How Swizz Beatz Climbed to the Top of Saudi Arabia’s Camel Racing Scene

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      “I’m just bringing the cool factor to it,” said the American hip-hop producer, who has spent millions of dollars on 48 camels for a team he calls “Saudi Bronx.”As the Arabian Peninsula’s fastest camels galloped around a track in the Saudi desert, Kasseem Dean, a Grammy Award-winning hip-hop producer from the Bronx, watched nervously from an air-conditioned V.I.P. viewing hall.Waiters in black vests plied the crowd with lemonade and red velvet cupcakes. Women in sundresses milled around off-white sofas, sipping fizzy mocktails.Though the camels sprinting past were the main event, Mr. Dean, better known as Swizz Beatz, felt as if all eyes in the room were on him — one of the newest competitors in Saudi Arabia’s deep-pocketed camel racing scene. Four years since he entered and won his first race, he has spent millions of dollars to buy 48 racing camels, ascending into the most elite circles of the sport.“When you discover it, you enter into a whole other world,” said Mr. Dean, 45, whose team of camels, “Saudi Bronx,” has won trophies across the region and deepened his attachment to the kingdom, which he first visited in 2006.He now travels to Saudi Arabia so often that he considers it a second home. He is a co-founder of a roller-skating rink in the desert retreat of AlUla, where the camel race was held, and keeps an apartment in the capital, Riyadh; a few years ago, he was granted Saudi citizenship.The competitors with robot jockeys on their backs, followed by trainers in SUVs who remotely control the robots.Saudi Camel Racing Federation More

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      Jay-Z’s Big Tonys Duet With Alicia Keys Was Pretaped

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      The two stars brought down the house with “Empire State of Mind,” their 2009 love song to New York City, which they had recorded earlier on a grand marble staircase outside the auditorium.It drew one of the biggest roars of the night at the Tony Awards: Alicia Keys was performing a medley from her Broadway musical “Hell’s Kitchen” on Sunday when she walked out of the auditorium and was shown joining Jay-Z on a marble staircase for “Empire State of Mind,” their 2009 love song to New York City.“Had to do something crazy — it’s my hometown!” Keys said as the cameras followed her walking out of the auditorium at the David H. Koch Theater in Lincoln Center. A video screen onstage cut to Jay-Z, the Brooklyn-born rapper and mogul, as he performed from the curved marble staircase just outside the auditorium. Keys was seen joining him.There was a reason Jay-Z never appeared on the Tonys stage except in video form, though. In a savvy trick of the production, the reunion between two of music’s biggest stars was pretaped and carefully edited to seamlessly make it appear part of the live performance on Sunday night’s Tonys telecast, according to two people with knowledge of the telecast preparations who were not authorized to speak publicly about them. (New York Magazine reported earlier that the segment had been pretaped.)Live or taped, the duet became one of the biggest moments of the night. The Broadway crowd went wild as Jay-Z closed with, “Brooklyn, New York City in the Tonys tonight!”Some in the audience — who were gathered to celebrate an art form where eight live performances each week is the norm — seemed to think that the performance was unfolding live just outside the auditorium.But those outside the auditorium quickly realized what was going on. CJay Philip, who won an excellence in theater education award at the ceremony, was watching the performance on a screen in the lobby, not far from the marble staircase where Keys and Jay-Z were being shown performing in front of a sculpture by Yasuhide Kobashi.“Maybe for a second I was like, ‘Oh, Jay-Z is here?,’” she said, before realizing it had been a theatrical sleight of hand. When she got back to her seat, her mother exclaimed, “That was amazing!”“I was like, ‘Well, I’m glad mom enjoyed it,’” Philip said.Another member of the audience, Wendall K. Harrington, a Broadway projection designer who received a special Tony for her work, said that while some people around her seemed confused about whether the performance was live, she wasn’t.“I was not fooled,” she explained. “I’m in the projection business.” More

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      Best and Worst Moments From the 2024 Tony Awards

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      Alicia Keys and Jay-Z’s high-wattage performance was a highlight, as were first-time wins for Kecia Lewis, Jonathan Groff and David Adjmi.Ariana DeBose ended her third turn as Tonys host with a mic drop. Otherwise, last night’s ceremony offered a first time for everything and very nearly everyone. All eight winners in the acting categories took home their first trophies. (How is it possible that this is Jonathan Groff’s inaugural win?) The playwright David Adjmi, in his Broadway debut, won for “Stereophonic,” as did its director Daniel Aukin, also a Tony-winning newbie. Danya Taymor took home the prize for best direction of a musical for “The Outsiders,” her initial win. (“The Outsiders” also won for best musical.) In a mellow, equitable night, the other awards were spread among many of the nominated shows, with “Stereophonic,” “The Outsiders,” “Appropriate” and an ingeniously reimagined “Merrily We Roll Again” carrying home the top prizes. Here are the highs and lows — and wait, is that Jay-Z on the stairs? — of the ceremony.Now that’s putting on a show“The Outsiders” won best new musical. As the New York Times’s chief theater critic, Jesse Green, put it, Tony voters went with “the underdog show about perennial underdogs.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe producers and director were the same, but so much about this year’s telecast was a vast improvement on that of previous years. The pacing was swifter: The main broadcast ended on time and the pre-broadcast ended early. The dialogue was more dignified: no brainless chatter or mawkish introductions. The transitions were smoother: Sets were changed live on camera, saving time and showing us how theater actually works. And the investors who used to throng the stage when their shows won awards — not a good look, plus a traffic problem — were sequestered in some alternative universe and beamed in by video. All this allowed the show to deliver better entertainment while leaving room for thoughtfulness and giddiness, and both together. For the first time in a long time, the Broadway on TV felt like the one I know. JESSE GREENWrong-footed openingSara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe Neil Patrick Harris years set an imposing bar for Tony broadcast opening numbers, and this year’s attempt, a strained variety-show knockoff that prematurely promised “this party’s for you,” didn’t end the drought. The Tonys would have done better opening with “Empire State of Mind” from “Hell’s Kitchen” — the night’s highest-wattage performance, featuring Alicia Keys and Jay-Z. Or, better if not bolder: “Willkommen” from “Cabaret,” which was expertly staged for the camera and drenched in Eddie Redmayne’s kooky charisma. SCOTT HELLERThird time’s the charmWendell Pierce presenting Kara Young with her Tony, which she received for “Purlie Victorious.”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

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      Sam Smith Throws a Gay Pride Party

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      The British singer selected Julius’, a Manhattan tavern with a storied past, as the place to celebrate the 10th anniversary of “In the Lonely Hour.”On Thursday night in the West Village of Manhattan, the soulful British balladeer Sam Smith hosted a private party at Julius’, which is known as the oldest gay bar in New York. Friends and fans sweltered inside the tavern, sipping vodka tonics as they waited for a late-night performance by Smith and a rumored special guest, Alicia Keys.Smith, who uses they/them pronouns, chatted with fans by the worn wooden bar. Standing about 6-foot-7 in Vivienne Westwood platform boots, paired with a tartan kilt and a big belt, the Grammy-winning singer towered above those who asked for selfies.The gathering commemorated the 10th anniversary of Smith’s debut album, “In the Lonely Hour,” which included the slow-burning anthems “Stay with Me” and “I’m Not the Only One.” Little menus along the bar advertised cocktails named after Smith songs like “Good Thing” (a cosmo) and “Life Support” (a margarita). And they noted Julius’ relevance as a historic site, detailing the events of the 1966 Sip-In, an act of civil disobedience that predated the Stonewall uprising by several years.The crowd at Smith’s barroom party.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesWith Pride celebrations in full force throughout the West Village, Smith had chosen Julius’ precisely because of its connection to the Sip-In, when members of the Mattachine Society, an early gay rights group, visited Julius’ to challenge bars that would not serve gay customers. When the activists were refused service after intentionally revealing that they were “homosexuals,” the incident made news, attracting the attention of the Commission on Human Rights.“Why did I pick Julius’?” Smith said, leaning down to a reporter. “Because I’ve never felt more safe in any other bar in the world than here.”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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      Enhancing Broadway, by Any Bodily Means Necessary

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      The choreographers nominated for Tony Awards this year have a broader vision than usual of the possibilities of dance in theater.In the Broadway musical adaptation of “The Outsiders,” something shocking keeps happening. It isn’t that the characters throw punches, or not exactly. These are teenagers who rumble, so it isn’t surprising that they’re violent. What’s shocking is the kinesthetic impact. You seem to feel the blows yourself.The impact is electrifying, but it doesn’t operate alone. It serves the storytelling and engages the emotions of an audience by bodily means. This is what choreography at its best can do, and it isn’t limited to what you might think of as dancing.The choreographers of “The Outsiders” and of the four other shows nominated for the Tony Award in that category this year understand this. None dole out the usual stuff. This broader vision of theatrical choreography is worth noticing and applauding.Hell’s KitchenMaleah Joi Moon plays the lead role in “Hell’s Kitchen,” which has choreography by Camille A. Brown.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesA loosely autobiographical jukebox musical of songs by Alicia Keys, “Hell’s Kitchen” takes place in the 1990s, in the Manhattan neighborhood of the title. Camille A. Brown’s choreography fits the setting. It looks, delightfully, like dancing that the people who live there would do, like regular folks getting their groove on.But it’s also a throwback to an older, neglected mode of integrating dance into a musical, the tradition that Agnes de Mille inaugurated with shows like “Oklahoma!” and “Carousel” in the 1940s. Like de Mille, Brown individuates the ensemble with detail: This guy is extra flamboyant; that gal pops her gum bubbles on the beat. Moving like this, the dancing chorus becomes the appealing community that draws the show’s 17-year-old protagonist, Ali, into the world — and out from the apartment building where her mother wants her to stay sheltered.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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      The Tony Nominee Starring in Alicia Keys’s ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ on Broadway

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      Maleah Joi Moon almost gave up on theater. Now, in her first professional role, the “Hell’s Kitchen” star is a Tony nominee.Maleah Joi Moon has come a long way in a short time.Just a few years ago, she was a theater kid in suburban New Jersey, listening to her dad’s Alicia Keys records, starring in a high school production of “Rent,” waiting outside a Broadway stage door hoping to meet the cast of “Waitress.”Now, at 21, she’s a Tony nominee for her Broadway debut as the star of the new Alicia Keys musical, “Hell’s Kitchen,” which opened last month. That means she is working alongside the people she had just been fangirling — getting vocal advice and the occasional breakfast with Keys; honing her acting instincts with the show’s director, Michael Greif, who directed “Rent” 28 years ago; and learning to manage an eight-show week from Shoshana Bean, the actress she stage-doored in “Waitress,” who has taken Moon under her wing while portraying her mother.Moon’s confident performance — smoky voice, headstrong attitude, gestural dance moves — has caught the attention of critics. “Sensational,” Elisabeth Vincentelli declared in The New York Times. For Vulture, Jackson McHenry called her both “a great discovery” and “a virtuoso.” And Adam Feldman of Time Out went for wordplay: “With apologies to astronomers: Moon is a star.”“It’s surreal and it’s ridiculous and crazy and insane and all the things,” Moon told me as we stood in Shubert Alley, just under a digital marquee featuring her atop a piano, not far from the stage door where she now signs autographs for her own fans. “But my inner child — the one that wanted to be Nala on Broadway — is like, this is aligned. It’s divine alignment. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t meant.”Moon is dancing a delicate dance in “Hell’s Kitchen,” sort of playing Alicia Keys and sort of not. The show is about a few formative months in the life of Ali, a 17-year-old girl chafing under her mother’s vigilance, hooking up with a street musician and discovering a gift for piano. It is a fictionalized remix of Keys’s own childhood chapters, but it is partly Moon too — she has been with the show through developmental workshops and an Off Broadway production, and her personality and physicality, as well as her very recent adolescence, inform those of her character.“Hell’s Kitchen,” a semi-autobiographical Alicia Keys musical, was nominated for 13 Tony Awards.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

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      Alicia Keys on Nabbing 13 Tony Nominations for ‘Hell’s Kitchen’

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      Alicia Keys has been working on “Hell’s Kitchen” for 13 years, so she found it serendipitous — in addition to thrilling — that on Tuesday morning her musical picked up 13 Tony nominations.In an interview shortly after the nominations were announced, Keys was clearly heartened by the news. The show, featuring her songs and a book by Kristoffer Diaz, is personal for Keys. The show is about a 17-year-old girl whose life circumstances have enormous echoes of Keys’s own upbringing — the single mother, the hunger for independence, the passion for piano, even the same subsidized housing development.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Congratulations! What do you make of this?Whoa! I’m definitely in a deep state of freaking out in a really great, awesome, grateful way. I don’t know what’s happening to me — I’m a songwriter and I can’t put my words together, but I feel unbelievable. I’m so excited for everybody to be recognized.Did you ever have any doubts, or were you always confident about this one?I’ve always felt really good about it, and I know that we’ve put the work and the time into it, and so I do feel a sense of strength and joy around it, but you just never know how people receive things. You never know how it all goes. And ultimately you can’t create with that in mind — you have to create with your mission in mind.Do you really burn palo santo around the theater?Absolutely! Every crevice, every backstage place, every dressing room, on the stage itself, in the theater, in the seats. Just creating that good energy.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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      The Culture Desk: Alicia Keys on Reimagining “Fallin” for Broadway

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      Alicia Keys was only 20 years old when her 2001 single “Fallin’” became an international sensation, topping the Billboard charts, winning multiple Grammys and helping propel her to stardom. Now, more than two decades later, the song appears in the new Broadway musical “Hell’s Kitchen.”The show — which draws from Keys’s life story and her discography — presents ”Fallin’” in a totally new way: as a song of seduction sung by a middle-aged man. Keys joins our theater reporter, Michael Paulson, to discuss the history of “Fallin’” and what she has learned from adapting the song for the stage.On today’s episodeMichael Paulson, a theater reporter for The Times. More