Andrew1986
Registrado: 27 Ago 2005
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| Publicado: Jue Ago 09, 2007 11:40 pm Asunto: |
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Toni celebra un año con su show "Revealed", y es homenajeada con una sorpresa en la mitad del espectáculo
Cita:
Toni’s celebration last evening also brought good news about her young autistic son. She dabbed at her teary eyes as she talked about his progress and revealed he has just started talking. “That means he will be able to attend normal kindergarten as well as his special autism classes” said Toni.
TONI, TONI, TONI
Congratulations are in order tonight as sexy singer Toni Braxton celebrates her first anniversary at the Flamingo—and hotel president Don Marrandino has extended her contract for another six months, taking her through until at least Valentine’s Day next year!
In her lucky-green decorated backstage dressing room she giggled: “You just ain’t a star till you’ve played Vegas, and now I’ve managed to prove it. All that hard work, the ups, the downs, was preparation for this fabulous year at the Flamingo.”
I spoke more with the sensational singer:
RL: What’s the secret behind the success?
TB: First, it’s all music, dance and non-stop hit songs. It is sexy, a little adult, it does not mean topless, but it is very tastefully-sexy and very high energy. The dancers look just like MTV video girls. A lot of eye candy and great dancers up there which is really good for me. They lead me into the same energy and we all shine together.
RL: Talking about eye candy; you are 5’1” yet your portrait is the size of a football field on the front of this hotel. How does that feel?
TB: I was so excited. No one ever told me about it in advance, so when I saw it I just couldn’t believe it and I was a little overwhelmed. I’m driving on the I-15 and I suddenly see parts of my head and body being revealed right across the building. I was behind the wheel of my car and sort of did a double-take the first time, wanting to brake and see if it was for real. It is a great feeling every time I see it - now I know it’s for real.
RL: Have you settled in to life in Las Vegas:
TB: I was a little nervous at first when the show opened because I never knew Vegas. Then I discovered it was so suburban, I‘m still excited about it all. Touring was great but I couldn’t bring my kids on the road all the time. This has been the perfect thing for me. It enables me to sing and be a mom, and I get to perform every night. It is great. My day consists of waking up at 7 a.m. to get my son ready for school, we eat breakfast, talk about what he dreampt about, then my husband and I take him to school. By day I am a mom, and by night I put on some red lipstick, turn into a stage performer and do my thing.
RL: Before you decided to make Vegas your home you looked at all the different shows around town to see what was happening, and one of the shows you went to see was Celine’s. You got into a conversation with her and asked her about living in Vegas?
TB: She said to me I absolutely had to live and perform here. She told me I had to drink plenty of water - and I’ve taken her advice. She said, “It’s great, I am a mommy, Vegas is great, it is a new Vegas and an exciting Vegas, it was always great to me.” I just go, wow—I can’t believe I am here. I am here. I see all the street signs with the stars’ names on them and I am like, maybe one day they will give me a Toni Braxton Dr. I’d only preformed here once eight years ago at the Aladdin for two nights and that was it. That is all. So I’d been here once for just two shows almost ten years ago - and now I’m living here, performing here and with my own theater! Now that’s incredible.
RL: What is it like to be on the road all of your life and then suddenly settle down. What’s the emotional feeling to that?
TB: It brings normalcy and security to your life. I did Broadway and that was great, but that wasn’t a Toni show and I want to do my thing, so for me it is just time to have a normal life, put down roots and yet still be a performer at night. I feel like Batgirl jumping between the two roles!
RL: What have we learned from the show about Toni Braxton that we didn’t know before?
TB: What kind of a performer I am, why I am in the business, and why I do what I do. I have certainly revealed a few things that maybe only a few people have seen or knew about. I brought out old video footage from when I signed my first record deal. You see me with all my flaws. When you get older, you are not afraid to show these things. I’ve been through so much that I don’t care now that everybody knows my whole story.
RL: Is it safe to say that you have had some pretty rocky ups and downs with people in the recording business not being good people? Is everything alright now?
TB: It is getting much better now. There was a point when I was considering leaving the business, I wanted out. I wanted to call it quits, run and hide - it was just so public for me with the bankruptcy and all the other things that I have gone through. Unfortunately for me, a lot of people think I’d just blown all my money on wasteful stuff, but the truth was that my royalty income check after I sold my second album came to less than 2,000 dollars. So that is what people don’t know.
RL: 10 million copies and $2,000 dollars in royalties? Why? Is that the all-time record screwing?
TB: When you are an artist it sounds really good that you get 34 cents a record, but out of that they took away the costs of recording, marketing and all that, so my portion was less than 2,000 dollars. That is why I had to file for bankruptcy; I had to get out of all the contracts. I had to break away to do it myself and start all over again properly. But that is why no one really talks about it because all they know is that I went bankrupt – but they never knew why I filed for bankruptcy. They just didn’t really know how bad it all happened.
RL: So now is it like a giant weight has been lifted off of your shoulders?
TB: I am free again, I got a really big paycheck, I get to do my music again and I took time off to be a mom and get married and all that stuff, and when you take time off it is hard to get back into the business sometimes. I have been very blessed and fortunate. It has been baby steps, but coming to Vegas I realize the people still like me, they still remember me and I am now in a very good place again. The light is shining and the darkness has gone.
RL: You’ve appeared in arenas in front of thousands of people, so why would opening in Vegas make you nervous?
TB: Every show I have ever done, I am always nervous for the first two minutes. Every show, TV, live appearance; and then it starts to go away within ten minutes, and then I am good and I think, this is what I do – and do it well. And then the nerves vanish. It takes two minutes every time to breathe properly again and flow into the show. Then everything is fine.
Harrah’s president Don Marrandino, who made the decision to give Toni her own starring Strip showroom, added: “I always remember the dress she wore at the Grammy awards in the year 2000, and I remember “Unbreak My Heart,” and the way the Flamingo is going is a little sexier, a little more fun, a little more hip, so I knew she would be one of the most interesting entertainers on the Strip. I mean, Celine is a superstar, but besides that there isn’t any entertainer that at the peak of their career has settled down and played in Las Vegas. I thought that would be interesting.
“I think from a fashion perspective, she is one of the most amazingly photographed women in the world; she has sold 40 million records and has a very interesting fan base. She has the R&B, the young fans, and the hip-hop culture loves her, multimillionaire NBA players love her; it’s been an amazing opportunity. She wants to stay in Vegas for all the right reasons, to be a mom, she didn’t like the traveling thing, so it’s all come together as an unbelievable success.
“I told Toni before she began, ‘go look at every single show in Vegas.’ They did that, they did their homework; they looked at all the dancing going on in Vegas. As a result I can assure you their dancing troupe and their routines are different from anything you’ve seen on stage before.
“This is very hot, very sexy – this is Las Vegas, so you have to be. It is certainly not a Cirque type of thing. This is very street, classical, Flamenco, and if you look at the dancers, five females, six guys, they are amazing. They hired people from all over the country that did rock and music videos. They looked at every show, really researched it. They got every bell and whistle that you could wish for on a stage, and as a result, Toni’s show has really rocked!”
I asked Don if there was a little bit of a torn loyalty, since Celine Dion works for the same company just 50-yards across from each other on the Strip. I wanted to know how both girls dealt with each other’s competition. He told me:
“It is funny, Toni came and talked to Celine and asked if she was cool with it. I think ‘Unbreak My Heart,’ which was a multi-platinum selling record, Celine had actually turned down, so it is actually funny that Toni’s biggest hit was turned down because Celine picked one about a sinking boat and passed on the other!! But I think, you look across the street and there they are. Not many women have pipes like these two women, so I think they compliment each other.
“She also was reverent and respectful to Gladys Knight, who performed in this room for several years. She talked to Gladys about the advantages and disadvantages about being in Vegas. Toni talked to a lot of people about making the permanent move to Vegas. She got to know them all well as new friends and things have gone very well.
“Toni fits the brand of what we are looking for at the Flamingo: young, hot, sexy and unexpected. She fits our niche right down the middle, and she is just one of the few people at the peak of her career that is going to sing here for another six months at least. This place is going to swing a little bit younger, and I think having Toni in here is a real bold statement. If you see the picture on the side of the building, which is the largest billboard in the history of the world, we put this woman who is 5’1” and stretched her 100 feet by 100 feet.
“We want to do something for the people that are young at heart, the Gen-X kind of person, so I think the Toni fan base is 20 something to 60 something, and that is what we are going for. One of our internal things is that it is not your grandfather’s Flamingo. It was and did great, but it didn’t have a lot of personality, so we are putting personality into it.”
“Toni’s show, the dancers and the band are off the hook. I mean, how many singers have a harp up there, and dancers that you want to get on stage with? It is a little MTV, very sexy, and with brilliant choreography. Toni is not unlike Britney Spears or Janet Jackson because she moves, writhes and jumps right along with her 11 dancers. One girl is a South African Olympic gymnast and so a lot of things are incorporated into the show that you won’t see anywhere else in town!”
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