Profile

Tony-award-winning choreographer Bill T. Jones takes on groundbreaking new material with Fela!, a musical about the life of Afrobeat pioneer Fela Anikulapo Kuti, who rose to hero status fighting government corruption in Nigeria. Afrobeat fans will be satisfied to see devotees Antibalas jamming exuberantly onstage, and Sahr Ngaujah, in the title role, “is a near-perfect vocal match for Kuti,” says our Rebecca Milzoff in a magazine profile of Jones. While Jones had to tame his expansive production style for a theater audience, it’s still “the dance that makes the story. Fela’s angry recollection of his grandfather’s taste for colonial-style music, for example, is an emotional knockout thanks to the solemnity of the accompanying Yoruba processional."