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    10 Works and Performances That Helped Me Make Sense of 2023

    Global conflict and personal loss encouraged our critic to seek out art that gave her a better understanding of grief and healing.“I hope you don’t mind if we carry on,” Juicy says at the end of “Fat Ham.” The other characters in the play then begin cleaning and clearing the stage, an act that affirms Juicy’s proposition and, in this work inspired by Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy, suggests that there might be a way for them to work through their shared trauma together.Those words hit me hard when I heard them last spring. I was staving off my own mourning as my family prepared for the 10th anniversary of my brother Shaka’s death from cancer. That, coupled with political crises and global despair, pushed me to find film, television and performances that helped me make sense of my grief and, hopefully, find a release for it.‘Fat Ham’I almost didn’t see what ended up as one of my favorite plays of the year. I could not wrap my head around the story line of a Black, queer, “Hamlet”-like play, even after it had won over my fellow critics and earned the Pulitzer Prize for best drama. Then I saw it on Broadway. I was startled by its clever transformation of an Elizabethan-era depressive into Gen Z ennui through its main character Juicy (Marcel Spears), a 20-something mourning his father’s death as well as the hyper-masculinity that his family and society impose on him. Though Juicy sneaks glances and shares asides with the audience, “Fat Ham” truly breaks theater’s fourth wall when the cast stages a surreal group cover of Radiohead’s “Creep” and then again with its unexpectedly liberatory final scene that invites us to join them in a party filled with glitter, gender fluidity and Black joy. (Read our review of “Fat Ham.”)The Last Season of ‘Succession’Who knew that if you killed off Logan Roy (Brian Cox), the show’s most dynamic character, his children would easily make up for his lost charisma? The “Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong, that’s who knew. I can’t think of three more heart-wrenching performances of parental loss than Shiv (Sarah Snook), her voice breaking as she pleads, “Daddy? I love you. Don’t go, please. Not now,” on the phone; Roman (Kieran Culkin), breaking down during his eulogy; and Kendall (Jeremy Strong), the most tragic, as he loses his bid to replace his father as chief executive. In the end, Kendall simply stares out at the water rather than being buoyed up or submerged in it as he has been in the past. A man without a company, it is a fate that, for him, is far worse than death. (Read our review of the “Succession” finale.)‘A Thousand and One’In “A Thousand and One,” Teyana Taylor plays Inez, a mother scarred by her childhood in foster care. Aaron Kingsley Adetola plays Terry.Focus FeaturesWinner of a grand jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival, A.V. Rockwell’s debut feature, “A Thousand and One,” sensitively explores the failure of society’s safety nets to protect Black families and the lengths Black mothers will go to ensure their children’s future. But underneath that story is another: one about the personal voids we try to fill. Appearing in her first leading role, Teyana Taylor plays Inez, a mother scarred by her childhood in foster care. She infused this character with such electricity and vitality that I found myself championing her every move, even, or especially, her most morally ambiguous decisions. (Read our interview with the director.)‘Past Lives’What if someone you pined for turns out to be your soul mate, not in this life, but another? This tension drives Celine Song’s debut film “Past Lives,” a tender portrait of two adults, Na Young (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), who forged a special bond as classmates in Seoul but lost touch over the years. Their poignant performances and Song’s intimate directing style make the chemistry between these two characters believable. But, we, and they, are left with the sense that the chasm caused by immigration (and the self-invention it requires) is insurmountable, making longing the most consistent emotion available to them. (Read our review of “Past Lives.”)‘Purlie Victorious’When he first conceived of writing a play based on his childhood in rural, segregated Georgia, Ossie Davis tried to write it straight. Once he realized that satire was better suited to capture the absurdity and tragedy of American racism, he premiered his first play, “Purlie Victorious.” Back on Broadway 62 years later, the play, directed by Kenny Leon, stars Leslie Odom Jr. as the ambitious preacher Purlie and Kara Young as Lutibelle, a naïve young woman he brings home to impersonate a dead cousin whose inheritance Purlie wants. The resulting ruckus undercuts an enduring racial stereotype — that all Black people look alike — while sharing a radical vision of Black pride and interracial solidarity. Odom is a mesmerizing triumph and Young a hilarious tour de force, while this is Leon (“Fences,” “Topdog/Underdog”) at his very best. (Read our interview with the cast and director.)Jeffrey Wright in ‘American Fiction’Jeffrey Wright as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison in “American Fiction.” Ellison is torn between staying true to his highbrow literary vision and caricaturing Black life to make money and take care of his mother. via TIFFJeffrey Wright is a consummate screen stealer — this year alone, I wanted more speeches from his General Gibson in “Asteroid City” and more shade from his Adam Clayton Powell Jr. in “Rustin.” But not since “Basquiat” in 1996 have I seen Wright as a lead in a feature-length film, and his performance in Cord Jefferson’s “American Fiction” reminds us what an actual loss this is for those of us who love watching movies. He wholly embodies Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, a novelist who, in the process of mourning the death of his father and sister, is torn between staying true to his highbrow literary vision and caricaturing Black life to make money and take care of his mother. Wright gives a nuanced, captivating performance, punctuated with humor, anger, desire and vulnerability, while his character conveys the frustrations of Black artists who refuse to conform to the white gaze.‘The Last of Us’There are so many painful separations and sentimental reunions on “The Last of Us,” the dystopian HBO series based on the video game of the same name, that it is hard for me to pick the most affecting one. I am choosing the story in which Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a 14-year-old orphan who is immune to the brain infection that has decimated most of the world, reconnects with her former roommate Riley (Storm Reid), who left to join the resistance. When Riley takes Ellie on an overnight trip to an abandoned mall, we see how liberating their adolescent female desire for each other is, making this night of last memories even more apocalyptic. (Read our review of “The Last of Us.”)Jodie Comer in ‘Prima Facie’When Jodie Comer, best known as an assassin on “Killing Eve,” decided to do her first major stage role, she went big with “Prima Facie.” Alone on a Broadway stage for 100 minutes, Comer commands our attention as Tessa Ensler, a barrister who has moved up in the British class system only to be pulled back down as a victim of a sexual assault. Tessa finds herself in a paradox: In the past, she has defended male clients from assault accusations. Comer moves through the emotions of grief, shame, self-doubt, rage and hope with such intensity that it still seems impossible to me that this was her professional stage debut. (Read our review of “Prima Facie.”)‘Reservation Dogs’Graham Greene as Maximus, left, and D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai as Bear in “Reservation Dogs,” a show that redefined American television.Shane Brown/FXDespite its notable lack of Emmy nods, “Reservation Dogs,” the first television show where every writer, director and main character was Indigenous, redefined American television over three seasons. While it is primarily a coming-of-age story, this final season’s episodes veered thrillingly into family drama, horror, science fiction and comedy. I am sad to say goodbye to these characters, but I am grateful for its brilliant ensemble and its affirmation of community, and how a people who lived and grieved together can, through ritual and remembrance, find their way back to each other and teach themselves, and those watching them, how to heal. (Read our interview with the “Reservation Dogs” showrunner.)Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour“Uncle Jonny made my dress,” Beyoncé rhymes on “Heated,” a single from her 2022 album “Renaissance.” “That cheap spandex, she looks a mess.” That playful line reminds us that she dedicated this album to her maternal uncle Jonny, a Black gay man who helped raise her and died of H.I.V./AIDS-related causes. (She released her concert film on Friday, which was World AIDS Day.) The lyric also declares the political aesthetics of “Renaissance” and the house music and Black queer ballroom cultures that inspired its sound and her style on this year’s behemoth world tour. She encouraged us to wear our most fabulous silver fashions and become human disco balls that mirrored “each other’s joy.” And so we came, witnessed and participated in what was more like a Black church revival than just a stadium concert, in which we left feeling as beautiful in our skin (and our clothing) as she appeared to us onstage. (Read our review of Beyoncé’s tour.) More

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    Beyoncé’s ‘Renaissance’ Film: 4 Takeaways From the Premiere

    The star skipped the red carpet and slipped into the celebrity-filled screening on Saturday night. But the movie pulls back the curtain — a little.Near the end of her new concert documentary, “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé,” Beyoncé states that she’s tired of being a “serial people-pleaser.” Since she was a child, she says, she has been striving for stardom, but now that she’s on top of the world and two years into her revelatory 40s, it’s time to recalibrate.“I have nothing to prove to anyone at this point,” she says.Maybe that’s why Beyoncé decided to skip the red carpet entirely at the Los Angeles premiere of her movie on Saturday night, leaving that task to a starry list of invitees that included Tyler Perry, Ava DuVernay, Lizzo and Issa Rae. Though Beyoncé made a posed appearance at the Oct. 11 premiere of “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” — like that concert documentary, “Renaissance” will be distributed by AMC Theaters — she entered her own premiere only after the lights had been turned off and the movie was seconds away from beginning.Unlike Swift, who shares plenty about her life and is currently in a high-profile, well-documented romance with the N.F.L. player Travis Kelce, Beyoncé is one of our most private superstars. She has given virtually no interviews over the last decade, and any insight into her life or work mostly has to be inferred from brief statements released on social media or her website. “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé,” which chronicles the most recent world tour in support of her seventh studio album, offers fans something new to interpret, pulling back Beyoncé’s curtain ever so slightly.Here are four the takeaways from the premiere of the movie, which is out in theaters Dec. 1.This is more than just a filmed concertSwift’s AMC film was a straightforward concert documentary that never left the stage: It was meant to feel as if you had the best seat on her tour stop, but it included no behind-the-scenes frills.“Renaissance” does things a little differently. Like Beyoncé’s film “Homecoming,” which chronicled the assemblage of her 2018 Coachella performance, the new movie often takes us behind the steel girders to see just how the mammoth tour was put together. “I’m excited for people to see the show,” Beyoncé says in the film, “but I’m really excited for everyone to see the process.”That process comes in bits and pieces as we watch Beyoncé call the shots on everything from lighting to set decoration to orchestration, sometimes getting frustrated that her notes aren’t heard. “Communicating as a Black woman,” she says, “everything is a fight.”Still, people come around to Beyoncé’s will sooner or later, she says: “Eventually, they realize this bitch will not give up.”Beyoncé also devotes behind-the-scenes segments to her recovery from a knee injury, a hometown visit in Houston, and her late, treasured Uncle Johnny, whose love of house music helped inspire the dance bangers on “Renaissance.” And there’s plenty of fan footage, too: The film often cuts away to shots of audience members in various states of ecstatic crying or frozen, religious awe.Only a little bit got left outThough the ballad-heavy prelude that opened Beyoncé’s Renaissance set list is trimmed, nearly every other song from the tour is included in the film. She even found room for “Thique” and “All Up in Your Mind,” a Renaissance double-header excised from many of her tour stops.The only egregious omission in this two-hour-48-minute movie is a behind-the-scenes bit that goes by way too quickly: Beyoncé convenes a Destiny’s Child reunion in Houston that includes not just Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams but also two of the girl group’s first members, LeToya Luckett and LaTavia Roberson, who were contentiously pushed out. “It was like a new birth for us, and a lot of healing,” Beyoncé says in her narration, though we only see the five of them together for a second and don’t hear a single thing they discussed. I would have watched three more hours of that summit alone!The missing ‘visuals’ remain a mysteryThe “Renaissance” album was released in July 2022 without any sort of music-video accompaniment, a surprise given Beyoncé’s recent run of game-changing visual albums for “Lemonade” and her self-titled 2013 record. A subsequent teaser video for the first “Renaissance” album track “I’m That Girl” seemed to promise more to come, but none did.At a Louisville, Ky., stop on the Renaissance tour, a fan held up a sign asking where the visuals were, prompting Beyoncé to grandly tell the crowd, “You are the visuals.” (The crowd didn’t love that.) The “Renaissance” movie is cheeky enough to include that moment, but otherwise, there’s no mention of the missing visuals, nor an explanation of why they’ve seemingly been scuttled.Blue Ivy fought for her tour spotBy and large, the Renaissance tour eschewed celebrity cameos and surprise drop-ins, preferring to keep the focus on the queen bee herself. Big names joined Beyoncé onstage at only two tour stops: Houston, where Megan Thee Stallion performed “Savage,” and Los Angeles, where Diana Ross and Kendrick Lamar came out for the concert held on Beyoncé’s 42nd birthday.Those appearances all made it into the movie, but the special guest the movie is most interested in is Beyoncé’s 11-year-old daughter, Blue Ivy Carter, who often participated as one of the dancers on her mother’s songs “My Power” and “Black Parade.” I caught one of Blue Ivy’s first tour appearances last May in London, where she was still getting the hang of her choreography, but by the end of the Renaissance tour, she had everything — the moves, the attitude — down pat.Turns out, Blue Ivy’s performance was only supposed to be a one-off, and even that took some negotiating. “She told me she was ready to perform, and I told her no,” Beyoncé says in the film. Though she finally relented, Beyoncé was dismayed when Blue Ivy read comments on social media that criticized her lackluster moves. But it thrilled her mother that instead of quitting, she decided to put in the work and train even harder for future stops.Blue Ivy also pops up in much of the behind-the-scenes footage, offering her often unsugarcoated opinion on stage design, song choices and more. In a film where everyone else treats Beyoncé as a boss or a goddess, Blue Ivy is an amusingly irreverent presence: To this 11-year-old, Beyoncé is just a mom. More

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    Beyoncé’s ‘Renaissance’ Film Coming to Movie Theaters

    The singer’s blockbuster tour ended over the weekend without the release of a visual component. But a “Renaissance” film will be released in December, she announced on Monday.Beyoncé’s 56-show Renaissance World Tour ended over the weekend without the release of any much-anticipated visual component tied to the singer’s shimmering 2022 dance album. Beyoncé, however, may have had a plan all along: “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé” will be released in movie theaters on Dec. 1, the singer announced on Monday, immediately following the tour’s final show in Kansas City, Mo.“Be careful what you ask for, ’cause I just might comply,” Beyoncé — whose two previous solo releases, her 2013 self-titled album and “Lemonade,” from 2016, were billed as “visual albums” — wrote on Instagram, quoting the “Renaissance” song “All Up in Your Mind.”The singer has previously released concert films, documentaries and extravagant music video collections via DVD (“I Am…Yours,” 2009), HBO (“Life Is but a Dream,” 2013, and “Lemonade,” 2016) and Netflix’s streaming service (“Homecoming,” 2019). But the release of the “Renaissance” film to theaters around the country follows a similar strategy deployed by Taylor Swift, who headlined the summer’s other culture-dominating blockbuster tour, and whose Eras Tour concert film is due out in theaters on Oct. 13.The two headliners are estimated to have generated more than $9 billion in economic activity combined, with each tour nearly matching the revenues of the Beijing Olympics in 2008, after adjusting for inflation.The “Renaissance” film will track the tour’s journey from its opening in Stockholm in May to its finale on Oct. 1. “It is about Beyoncé’s intention, hard work, involvement in every aspect of the production, her creative mind and purpose to create her legacy and master her craft,” according to an announcement. Tickets are on sale now.“When I am performing, I am nothing but free,” Beyoncé says in the trailer. “My goal for this tour was to create a place where everyone is free, and no one is judged.” The preview also includes behind-the-scenes footage of the singer rehearsing with her daughter Blue Ivy Carter, who performed on the tour, and interacting with her husband, Jay-Z, and the couple’s young twins.Writing in The New York Times upon the tour’s North American beginning, the critic Lindsay Zoladz said, “The show’s look — as projected in diamond-sharp definition onto a panoramic screen — conjured Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis’ by way of the 1990 drag ball documentary ‘Paris Is Burning.’” The critic Wesley Morris, writing about the album, a tribute to Black and queer dance music, said of Beyoncé: “The range of her voice nears the galactic; the imagination powering it qualifies as cinema.” More

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    Beyoncé’s Silvery, Shimmering Renaissance

    .cls-1 { fill: url(#linear-gradient); } .cls-2 { mask: url(#mask); } .cls-1 { fill: url(#linear-gradient); } .cls-2 { mask: url(#mask); } .cls-1 { fill: url(#linear-gradient); } .cls-2 { mask: url(#mask); } A Silvery, Shimmering Summer of Beyoncé Her tour has rivaled the Olympics in economic scale and an earthquake in its power. Sept. 27, 2023, 5:49 […] More

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    On Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour, the World Is Her Ball

    The pop superstar’s first solo outing in seven years draws on the dance-music cultures that inspired her 2022 album, and her work that led up to that ecstatic release.It was a crowd that had come to dance, dressed for a rodeo in the distant future: sparkling cowboy hats, silvery fringe, outré sunglasses and any other sartorial detail that represented “Renaissance,” Beyoncé’s dazzling seventh album and the occasion for her first solo tour in seven years. But as the imperial pop superstar took the stage at the Rogers Center in Toronto on Saturday night for the first North American show of her Renaissance World Tour, she reminded the club-ready audience just who was in charge. Because if they were prepared to move, she was going to make them wait a little longer.Setting the table for a two-and-a-half-hour performance that was visually spectacular, vocally ambitious and sometimes tonally confused, Beyoncé, 41 — clad in a glimmering chain-mail mini dress — began the show with a nearly 30-minute stretch of ballads and deep cuts that harked back to her past: an acrobatically sung solo rendition of the 2001 Destiny’s Child track “Dangerously in Love,” a bit of “Flaws and All” from the deluxe edition of her 2007 album “B’Day,” and the sparse, soulful “1+1” from 2011, which she belted atop a mirrored piano.Few seats in the stadium provided a legible view of Beyoncé’s expressive face, though the screen took care of that. The New York TimesIt was a both a display of her vocal agility and a curiously traditional way to start a show centered around an album as conceptually bold and forward-thinking as “Renaissance” — a sprawling, knowingly referential romp through the history of dance music, with an emphasis on the contributions of Black and queer innovators. Here, instead, was a stopover in Beyoncé’s Middle Ages.As a live entertainer, though, she has earned a fresh start. The Renaissance World Tour shows are some of Beyoncé’s first appearances since her dazzling, commanding performance headlining the 2018 Coachella festival (later released as the concert film and live album “Homecoming”), which served as a kind of mic-drop capstone to her career thus far. It would be futile to repeat that, and difficult to top it. The loose, fluid “Renaissance,” still said to be the first part of a trilogy, represents a new chapter in Beyoncé’s recorded oeuvre. And once the show finally found its center and, however belatedly, welcomed the crowd to the Renaissance, it heralded her maturity as a performer, too.The show’s look — as projected in diamond-sharp definition onto a panoramic screen — conjured Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” by way of the 1990 drag ball documentary “Paris Is Burning.” After a lengthy video introduction, Beyoncé emerged from a chrome cocoon and vamped through a thrilling stretch of the first suite of “Renaissance” songs; during “Cozy,” most strikingly, a pair of hydraulic robotic arms centered her body in industrial picture frames, like a post-human Mona Lisa.In May, when Beyoncé began the European leg of the Renaissance World Tour, rumors swirled that she may have been recovering from a foot injury, since her choreography was a bit more static and less stomp-heavy than usual. The Toronto show did nothing to dispel that chatter, but it also showed that it doesn’t matter much. Perhaps because of some constraints, Beyoncé has embraced new means of bodily expression. She brought the flavor of ball movements into the show and served face all night, curling her lip like a hungry predator, widening her eyes in mock surprise, scrunching her features in exaggerated disgust.The full grandeur of the stage was not visible from many of the side seats, making the band and sometimes the dancers difficult to see.The New York TimesFew seats in the stadium provided a legible view of Beyoncé’s face, of course, though the screen took care of that. She played expertly to the cameras that followed her every choreographed move, aware of how she’d appear to the majority of the audience and — perhaps just as crucially — in FOMO-inducing social media videos. The stage itself was breathtaking, featuring an arced cutout section of the screen that made for playful visuals, but its full grandeur was not visible from many of the side seats, making the band and sometimes the dancers difficult to see.The screen, though, was the point. Beyoncé’s two solo releases before “Renaissance” — her 2013 self-titled album and “Lemonade,” from 2016 — were billed as “visual albums,” featuring a fully realized music video for each track. Again toying with her fans’ anticipation, she has still not released any videos from “Renaissance,” giving the previously unseen graphics that filled her expansive backdrop an added impact, and making them feel more weighty than a convenient way to pass time between costume changes.Many of the tour’s outfits struck a balance between Beyoncé’s signature styles — megawatt sparkles, high-cut bodysuits — and the futuristic bent of “Renaissance.” She played haute couture bee in custom Mugler by Casey Cadwallader and glimmered in a Gucci corset draped with crystals. But the night’s most memorable look — so instantly iconic that a few fans had already tried to replicate it, from photos of the European shows — was a flesh-tone catsuit by the Spanish label Loewe, embellished with a few suggestively placed, red-fingernailed hands.Throughout the set, Beyoncé wove interpolations of her predecessors’ songs throughout her own, as if to place her music in a larger continuum. The grandiose “I Care” segued into a bit of “River Deep, Mountain High,” in honor of Tina Turner, who died in May. The cheery throwback “Love on Top” contained elements of the Jackson 5’s “Want You Back.” Most effective was the “Queens Remix” she performed of “Break My Soul,” which mashes up the “Renaissance” leadoff single with Madonna’s “Vogue,” paying homage to the mainstream pop star who brought queer ball culture to the masses before her. (The merch on sale at a Renaissance Tour pop-up shop in the days before the show included a hand-held fan emblazoned with the song title “Heated” for $40. It sold out.)The show contained moments that sometimes felt conceptually cluttered and at odds with the “Renaissance” album’s sharp vision, like dorm-room-poster quotes from Albert Einstein and Jim Morrison that filled the screen during video montages. The middle stretch, arriving with a lively “Formation,” featured Beyoncé and her dancers clad in camo print, riding and occasionally writhing atop a prop military vehicle. There was a wordless, gestural power in the moment she and her entourage held their fists in the air, referencing a salute that had rankled some easily rankle-able viewers of the 2016 Super Bowl Halftime Show. But if Beyoncé was calling for any more specific forms of protest or political awareness — especially in a moment when drag culture and queer expression are being threatened at home and throughout the world — those went unarticulated.At the end of the long night, Beyoncé floated above the crowd like a deity on a glittering horse for “Summer Renaissance.”The New York TimesBeyoncé’s endurance as a world-class performer remained the show’s raison d’être; she is the rare major pop star who prizes live vocal prowess. By the end of the long night — and especially during the striking closing number, the disco reverie “Summer Renaissance,” when she floated above the crowd like a deity on a glittering horse — she extended the microphone to lend out some of the high notes to her eager and adoring fans. “Until next time,” she said, keeping the stage banter relatively minimal and pat. “Drive home safe!”Even when Beyoncé embraces styles and cultures known for their improvisational looseness, she still seems to be striving toward perfection — a pageant smile always threatens to break through the stank face. Commanding a stadium-sized audience, she was an introvert wearing an extrovert’s armor. That tension is part of both her boundless charm and her occasional limitations as a performer. And it makes moments of genuine spontaneity all the more prized.Naturally, #RenaissanceWorldTour was trending on Twitter long after the show, but one of the clips that went viral was unplanned. During a rousing performance of her early hit “Diva,” Beyoncé accidentally dropped her sunglasses. She fumbled them for a second, mouthed an expletive as they fell to the ground, and gave a sincere, shrugging grin before snapping back into the choreography’s formation. For a fleeting moment, she seemed human after all. More

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    Beyoncé Returns to the Stage With a ‘Renaissance’ Spectacle

    The pop superstar opened her first solo tour in seven years in Stockholm and performed tracks from her acclaimed 2022 album, but left most of the choreography to her dancers.They came from Iceland, Portugal, Switzerland, Detroit. Dressed in “alien superstar” chic — rhinestone boots and disco-ready, glittery cowboy hats — a huge crowd gathered on Wednesday at the Friends Arena, their cheers reaching an almost deafening pitch as a woman gradually emerged from below, lights bouncing off the sequins on her outfit.Beyoncé was back onstage.The singer, style icon and heroine of the global BeyHive fan community is on the road solo for the first time in seven years with her Renaissance World Tour, which opened on Wednesday in Sweden with elaborate visuals but with unusual physical restraint from Beyoncé herself.Onstage at the 50,000-capacity arena in Stockholm, she appeared flanked by dancers and backed by a live band, performing for three hours before a giant screen that displayed a constantly morphing tableau that was part retrofuturism and part disco fantasia. At one point, the 41-year-old artist traded dance moves with a pair of giant robot arms; at another, an image of a silvery alien dancer in heels hovered over a disco ball.But for one of pop’s ultimate dancing queens, Beyoncé’s performance was far less physical than on past tours. She often seemed to keep her feet stationary while shaking her upper body, and appeared to favor one leg. She spent much of one song sitting atop a prop.Fans came from around the globe, drawn in part by the more affordable ticket prices in Sweden.Felix Odell for The New York TimesThe star’s eagle-eyed fan community speculated online that the singer was injured. A spokeswoman for Beyoncé did not respond to questions about her performance.Kristin Hulden, a Swedish fashion student who was wearing an embroidered jacket she had made that depicted Beyoncé riding a horse (the image on the cover of her latest album, “Renaissance”), said she had noticed the star’s more limited movement, but it hadn’t bothered her. “The show was so great,” she said. “The dancers, the visual — it never stopped.” Like many fans at the opening-night gig, she will attend several shows on the tour, returning to Friends Arena on Thursday and then heading to Hamburg, Germany, in June. “I’m very excited,” she added.Competition for tickets to pop’s biggest, priciest concerts has been stiff, and many in the crowd had traveled far — even thousands of miles — to guarantee that they would see Beyoncé this time. (Thanks in part to favorable exchange rates, tickets in Sweden ended up being far cheaper than in the United States or Britain, costing between 650 and 1,495 Swedish kronor, or about $63 to $146.)Rhoyle Ivy King, 26, an actor wearing a fluorescent turquoise jumpsuit and shades, said before the show that he had come from Los Angeles for the concert, spending about $2,500. “Anything for mother,” he said. “Seriously.”Beyoncé has not toured on her own since her Formation outing in 2016, following the release of her pop-culture-dominating “Lemonade.” In 2018, she performed at the Coachella festival and hit the road with her husband, Jay-Z, for their joint On the Run II Tour.Because Beyoncé offered few visual cues for her “Renaissance” era beyond her album artwork, fans came decked out in looks inspired by the disco cowboy aesthetic she nodded to there. The new tour is for “Renaissance,” a homage to decades of Black queer dance music. The LP, her seventh solo release, opened at No. 1 last summer, and its single “Break My Soul” became her first solo No. 1 hit since “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” in 2008.It was, notably, the first Beyoncé album in nearly a decade to arrive without a full suite of accompanying videos. Starting with her surprise self-titled LP in 2013, the singer has become synonymous with elaborately choreographed and highly produced visual pieces.On Wednesday, she revealed several futuristic fashion choices: an iridescent-effect minidress; a shimmery gold bodysuit festooned with black opera gloves covering strategic locations; a black-and-silver suit that resembled royal armor. At one point, Beyoncé was dressed in sci-fi bee chic: a yellow-and-black leotard with cutouts and sharp angles, and knee-high black boots. The cyborg theme was fully reflected at the merch stands, with T-shirts, hoodies and totes carrying images of Beyoncé in silvery, “Metropolis”-like robot costumes.The set list featured songs from her debut solo album from 2003 (“Crazy in Love”), her 2008 double album “I Am … Sasha Fierce” (“Diva”), her 2011 LP “4” (including “Love on Top,” which Beyoncé let the crowd finish for her) and her self-titled 2013 release (“Drunk in Love”), alongside a host of tracks from “Renaissance,” including “Move,” “America Has a Problem” and “Cozy.” For the closer, “Summer Renaissance,” the singer sat atop a silver horse that was hoisted from the rafters and then ascended above the crowd by herself, sporting a grand, sparkling cape.Beyoncé has not toured on her own since her Formation outing in 2016, following the release of her album “Lemonade.”Felix Odell for The New York TimesIn February, Beyoncé announced the Renaissance tour by simply posting an image to social media. Three months earlier, the demand for tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour had led to a Ticketmaster meltdown, leaving many fans frustrated and calling for Washington to examine the outsize market power of Ticketmaster and its corporate parent, Live Nation.To handle the ticketing for Beyoncé’s tour — which is being promoted by Beyoncé’s company, Parkwood Entertainment, and produced by Live Nation — Ticketmaster had an elaborate plan that included rolling out sales in batches, rather than all at once, and the process went far more smoothly.Still, Beyoncé drew controversy this year when she performed a private show at a luxury hotel in Dubai, in United Arab Emirates, where homosexuality is illegal. “Renaissance” draws heavily on dance music of the 1990s and L.G.B.T.Q. culture; at the Friends Arena, signs denoted some “gender neutral restrooms” in the official tour font.Oless Mauigoa, 35, had traveled from Salt Lake City and said that “Renaissance” had made him desperate to see the show. “I feel like it’s dedicated to a lot of gay styles,” he said. “I’m connected to it more than anything she’s done.”Beyoncé played into those connections throughout the show, nodding to the ballroom and vogueing culture that inspired “Renaissance” at the end of the night by giving the stage over to her dancers, who tried to outperform each other to rousing cheers.Beyoncé’s tour continues in Stockholm on Thursday and then arrives in London for five shows at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, starting May 29. Its North American leg will open in Toronto on July 9, will head to MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., on July 29 and 30 and will close in New Orleans at the Caesars Superdome on Sept. 27. More

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    How the Oscars and Grammys Thrive on the Lie of Meritocracy

    Despite all the markers of excellence, contenders like Danielle Deadwyler, Viola Davis and Beyoncé weren’t recognized for the highest honors. Niche awards don’t suffice.I didn’t see it coming, but maybe I should have.That refrain has been popping into my head repeatedly since learning that neither Viola Davis (“The Woman King”) nor Danielle Deadwyler (“Till”) was nominated for the best actress Oscar and that Andrea Riseborough and Ana de Armas had emerged as this year’s spoilers.It came to mind again on Sunday night when the Grammys awarded Harry Styles’s “Harry’s House” album of the year, not Beyoncé’s “Renaissance.” Though she made history that night as the most Grammy-winning artist of all time, this was Beyoncé’s fourth shutout from the industry’s most coveted category and another stark reminder that the last Black woman to take home that award was Lauryn Hill — 24 years ago. This time the message was loud and clear: Beyoncé, one of the most prolific and transformative artists of the 21st century, can win only in niche categories. Her music — a continually evolving and genre-defying sound — still can’t be seen as the standard-bearer for the universal.The music and movie industries differ in many ways, but their prizes are similarly determined by the predominantly older white male members of the movie and recording academies. Though both organizations have made concerted efforts in recent years to diversify their voting bodies in terms of age, race and gender, Black women artists, despite their ingenuity, influence and, in Beyoncé’s case, unparalleled innovation, continue to be denied their highest honors.This trend is no indication of the quality of their work but rather a reflection of something else: the false myth of meritocracy upon which these institutions, their ceremonies and their gatekeepers thrive.It is true that Black women, dating to Hattie McDaniel for “Gone With the Wind” (1939), have won the Academy Award for best supporting actress. And while it took a half-century for Whoopi Goldberg to receive an Oscar in the same category (for “Ghost”), over the past 20 years, seven Black women have won in this category, including Davis, and this year, Angela Bassett is a front-runner as well.Viola Davis in “The Woman King.” Because of the film’s critical and commercial reception, Oscar watchers thought she would be nominated. Instead, she was snubbed. Sony PicturesBut, in a way, this is an example of rewarding the niche. What’s being honored is a character whose function is in service to a film’s plot and protagonist. She is neither a movie’s emotional center nor primarily responsible for propelling its narrative. Such heavy lifting is why I think it made sense for Michelle Williams, whom many considered a lock for an Oscar for best supporting actress for “The Fabelmans,” to campaign as a lead instead. “Although I haven’t seen the movie,” she told The New York Times, “the scenes that I read, the scenes that I prepped, the scenes that we shot, the scenes that I’m told are still in the movie, are akin to me with experiences that I have had playing roles considered lead.”Interviews With the Oscar NomineesKerry Condon: An ardent animal lover, the supporting actress Oscar nominee for “The Banshees of Inisherin” said that she channeled grief from her dog’s death into her performance.Michelle Yeoh: The “Everything Everywhere All at Once” star, nominated for best actress, said she was “bursting with joy” but “a little sad” that previous Asian actresses hadn’t been recognized.Angela Bassett: The actress nearly missed the announcement because of troubles with her TV. She tuned in just in time to find out that she was nominated for her supporting role in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”Austin Butler: In discussing his best actor nomination, the “Elvis” star said that he wished Lisa Marie Presley, who died on Jan. 12, had been able to celebrate the moment with him.In the past, academy voters might have said there weren’t enough Black women in leading roles to consider. But “Till” and “The Woman King” disprove that. So we’re left with other, more traditionally meritocratic arguments about who deserves to be nominated for best actress — the quality of the individual performance, the critical response to a film, and a decent budget to market and campaign for Oscar consideration. Yet this year, even those measures suddenly seemed to be thrown out the window.Instead, in the case of Andrea Riseborough’s surprising nod for “To Leslie,” we saw a new Oscar strategy playing out before our eyes. A groundswell of fellow actors, including A-listers like Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet and even Cate Blanchett, who would go on to be nominated herself, publicly endorsed Riseborough’s performance on social media, at screenings and even at a prize ceremony. Since only 218 of the 1,302 members of the academy’s acting branch needed to rank a candidate first to secure a nomination, in time, that momentum translated into a nomination upset. That, in turn, led to a backlash, a review by the academy to make sure none of its campaign guidelines had been violated, and a backlash to the backlash, with Christina Ricci and Riseborough’s “To Leslie” co-star Marc Maron calling out the academy for its investigation. “So it’s only the films and actors that can afford the campaigns that deserve recognition?” Ricci wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post. “Feels elitist and exclusive and frankly very backward to me.”What fascinated me, however, was that what was being framed as a grass-roots campaign to circumvent studio marketing machines revealed another inside game. A racially homogeneous network of white Hollywood stars appeared to vote in a small but significant enough bloc to ensure their candidate was nominated.And while that explains how an Oscar campaign can be both nontraditional and elitist, it also underscores the other obstacles that Black actresses, in particular, and actresses of color in general, have to surmount just to be nominated, let alone win. Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Woman King” was so critically praised for its filmmaking and masterly performances and was such a commercially successful film that Davis was expected (at the very least) to garner her third nomination in the best actress category.Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe in “Blonde.” The film was widely panned.NetflixIn contrast, Andrew Dominik’s “Blonde,” starring de Armas, was so heavily panned for its brutal and sexist depiction of Marilyn Monroe that I assumed the prerelease chatter about her performance would have dampened by the time Oscar voting began. For more than any other film with a best actress contender this year, “Blonde” raises the question: Shouldn’t a protagonist have depth or multidimensionality for that actor’s performance to be noteworthy? As conceived by Dominik, Monroe merely flits from injury to injury, all in the service of making her downfall inevitable.Such representations reveal another pattern: Oscar voters continue to reward women’s emotional excess more than their restraint. In most films with best actress nominations this year, women’s anger as outbursts is a common thread. “Tár” and even “To Leslie” examines the dangerous consequences of such fury; “The Fabelmans” positions it as a maternal and artistic contradiction for Williams’s character; and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” brilliantly explores it as both a response to IRS bureaucratic inefficacy and intergenerational tensions between a Chinese immigrant mother and her queer, Asian American daughter. “Blonde” is again an exception, for de Armas’s Monroe expresses no external rage but sinks into depression and self-loathing, never directing her frustration at the many men who abuse her.Within that cinematic context, I wondered if it was possible to applaud Deadwyler for playing a character like Mamie Till-Mobley. Unlike the main characters of the other films, Till-Mobley, in real life, had to repress her rational rage over the gruesome murder of her son, Emmett, to find justice and protect his legacy. Onscreen, Deadwyler captured that paradox by portraying Till-Mobley’s constantly shifting self and her struggle to privately grieve her son’s death while simultaneously being asked to speak on behalf of a burgeoning civil rights movement. If words like “nuanced,” “subtle,” “circumspect” or “introspective” garner leading men Oscar attention (how else do we explain Colin Farrell’s nod?), female protagonists are often lauded for falling apart.Deadwyler and Whoopi Goldberg in “Till.” The lead’s repressed rage stands in contrast with the emotional outbursts of the nominated performances.Lynsey Weatherspoon/Orion Pictures, via Associated PressBut even that assumes that all women’s emotions are treated equally, when the truth is that rage itself is racially coded. Both “Till” and “The Woman King” depict Black women’s rage as an individual emotion and a collective dissent, a combination that deviates from many on-screen representations of female anger as a downward spiral and self-destructive.Commenting on such differential treatment, the “Till” director Chinonye Chukwu critiqued Hollywood on Instagram for its “unabashed misogyny towards Black women” after the academy snubbed her film. Likewise, in an essay for The Hollywood Reporter, Prince-Bythewood asked, “What is this inability of Academy voters to see Black women, and their humanity, and their heroism, as relatable to themselves?”It’s been over 20 years since Halle Berry won the best actress Oscar for her “Monster’s Ball” performance as a Black mother who grieves the loss of her son through alcohol and sex. The fact that she remains the only Black woman to have won this award is ridiculous. “I do feel completely heartbroken that there’s no other woman standing next to me in 20 years,” Berry reflected in the run-up to the Oscars last year. “I thought, like everybody else, that night meant a lot of things would change.”The difference between then and now is that there are far more Black women directors and complex Black women characters on the big screen than ever before. Maybe, next year, the academy members will get behind one of those actors. Then again, maybe I should know better. More

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    Beyoncé Has The Most Grammys Ever After Winning 32nd Award

    Move over, Sir Georg Solti — Beyoncé reigns at the Grammy Awards.After 88 career nominations, the R&B singer and pop superstar won her 32nd Grammy on Sunday, for best dance/electronic music album, giving her the record for most Grammy victories. Solti, a Hungarian-born conductor who was the previous leader, won his last award in 1998, the year after his death.Beyoncé’s fourth win of the night — after taking home best R&B song for “Cuff It” and two awards at the preshow ceremony — came in a category that showed the breadth of her two-decade career: “Renaissance,” her tribute to Black and queer dance music, beat work by Bonobo, Diplo, Odesza and Rüfüs du Sol. Beyoncé became the first Black woman to win in the dance album category, which has been awarded since 2005.Earlier, her No. 1 single “Break My Soul” had won in best dance/electronic recording, while “Plastic Off the Sofa,” from the same genre-spanning album, won best traditional R&B performance.After the winner for dance/electronic album was announced by James Corden — “This is an honor, because we are witnessing history tonight!” — Beyoncé, who had not yet arrived at the ceremony when she won her first televised award of the night, took the stage to a standing ovation.“I’m trying not to be too emotional,” she said, “and I’m trying to just receive this night.” (Already, a post had been uploaded to Beyoncé’s official Instagram celebrating her wins so far: “We won 3 y’all,” the caption read, alongside a photo of the singer with a trio of trophies. “‘Plastic Off the Sofa’ is my favorite song on ‘Renaissance’ most days. It’s hard to pick though. Haaa.”)Beyoncé went on to thank her “Uncle Jonny,” whose battle with H.I.V. she has cited as an influence on her turn to dance music, with its historical ties to the L.G.B.T.Q. community.“I’d like to thank the queer community for your love and for inventing the genre,” the singer said.Nominated nine times overall on Sunday, mostly for “Renaissance” and its songs, Beyoncé will have a chance to add to her total with the top categories still to come: song, record and album of the year, a prize she has never won despite three previous chances. Of the singer’s 32 trophies, just her song of the year victory in 2010, for “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It),” came in one of the Grammys’ major, all-genre fields.Beyoncé’s status as both a perennial, now-unmatched Grammy favorite and also a high-profile loser under the ceremony’s brightest lights — including album losses to both Adele and Taylor Swift, each of whom has won the category multiple times — has underlined the show’s complex relationship with contemporary Black music.While the Recording Academy, the organization behind the Grammys, has in recent years emphasized its commitment to showcasing hip-hop and R&B on the telecast, and to broadening its voter base, critics have contended that Black music has too often been overlooked in the top categories.Beyoncé had entered the night already the most awarded woman in Grammy history, and tied with the producer Quincy Jones, who has 28 wins, for second most overall trophies. Alison Krauss, the bluegrass singer and violinist who was nominated twice on Sunday but lost both awards, has 27, as does Chick Corea.Here’s Beyoncé’s entire speech:“I’m trying not to be too emotional, and I’m trying to just receive this night. I want to thank God for protecting me. Thank you, God. I’d like to thank my Uncle Jonny, who’s not here, but he’s here in spirit. I’d like to thank my parents — my father, my mother — for loving me and pushing me. I’d like to thank my beautiful husband, my beautiful three children, who are at home watching. I’d like to thank the queer community for your love and for inventing the genre. God bless you. Thank you so much to the Grammys. Thank you.” More