Early on Tuesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio delivered his State of the City address, staking out his vision of a more unified New York, promising to invest in neighborhoods that had been long overlooked in hopes of curbing economic inequality.
As if to drive home the point, Tuesday night he and his wife, Chirlane McCray, came to Brooklyn, to a stretch of Flatbush Avenue, to watch Diana Ross perform at the opening night of the newly renovated Kings Theater.
Now owned by the city, the Kings, which dates back to 1929 as one of five grand houses opened by the Loews theater chain, sits on a busy commercial strip in Flatbush, a neighborhood beginning to feel the strains of gentrification, and has been in disuse since 1977. It cost approximately $95 million to restore the Kings to a state something like its old glory, with spectacularly high, spectacularly ornate ceilings, carpet and curtains remade in their original style, and Art Deco chandeliers hanging elegantly from the ceiling. (The project was executed with a combination of public and private money.)
Its 3,200 or so seats were sold out for this show, with a crowd including local politicians in suits, women in fur coats and plenty of people in their day-to-day best. All of them — Mr. de Blasio, too — stood at attention for Ms. Ross for a vast majority of her hour-plus show (smooth jazz and lite-blues segments excepted).
Ms. Ross, as ever, was a human sparkler, taking the stage with a thousand-watt smile and in a series of sequined dresses wrapped in eruptions of tulle — first turquoise, then cherry red, then silver, then gold. Her hair was the usual cumulus cloud. She blew kisses to the people in the front rows and accepted a couple of bouquets. As a performer, she is a gamer, even at 70.
Her set was succinct and purposeful, moving from the factory-strong, sugarcoated melodies of Motown to the decadent, slinky empowerment of disco, her steady band rendering the two ideas as close siblings, though, in reality, they were first or second cousins. As a result, tender Supremes hits like “Baby Love” and “Stop! In the Name of Love” sounded a lot like twisty dance-floor numbers like “Upside Down” and even the dippy “Ease on Down the Road,” from “The Wiz.”
This wasn’t a flashy performance, but it was practiced and convincing. The sense of emphatic purpose was only disrupted midset, when Ms. Ross sang “Don’t Explain,” from “Lady Sings the Blues,” the 1972 film in which she played Billie Holiday. Here, she sang quietly and made room for her band members to take oozy solos. (“That’s Carl on fluegelhorn,” and so on.)
Throughout the night, Ms. Ross was hitting the vocal sketches of the songs, if not always the full shading. The works are deeply familiar, practically written on the brain. It was easy to get so lost in them that you might miss where Ms. Ross dropped out and her backup singers took over.
But even if Ms. Ross herself wasn’t moving at full speed, she was quick to remind the audience of how she once was. At a couple of points, the screen behind her displayed images of her from decades ago — striking angular poses, smoldering, giving strong stares.
Nevertheless, at this point, Ms. Ross is as much a feeling as a catalog. And a Diana Ross concert isn’t really a Diana Ross concert at all, but rather a place of collective memory. That’s why she could leave the stage for a few minutes here and there without diminishing the event much. And that’s why she spends maybe a third of her set covering other people’s songs: “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” and “I Will Survive,” which Ms. Ross has claimed for her repertoire for the last two decades.
She sang that twice at the end of the night; the second time, she brought out her daughter Rhonda, who gave impressive vocal assistance; her son, the actor Evan Ross, who danced a bit; his wife, the singer Ashlee Simpson, who was glowing; and Ms. Simpson’s son from her previous marriage to Pete Wentz, Bronx Mowgli, who looked a little bewildered. Meanwhile, yellow balloons were flying around the crowd and landing on audience members, including Mr. de Blasio, who took a mighty swat at one and sent it soaring toward the ceiling.
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