5 Moments That Made the Black Girl Magic Ball MATRIARCHS Unforgettable

I have covered events before. But I have never walked into a room quite like Alice Tully Hall on the night of March 26th, 2026.

The energy started before the doors even opened. People arrived dressed in their finest. Sequins catching the light, natural hair crowned high, laughter filling the Hauser Lounge during the VIP reception as Dr. Mahogany L. Browne and National Black Theatre's Jonathan McCrory moved through the crowd greeting guests with the warm intentionality of people who have been building something for a very long time.

And then the doors opened. People took their seats inside Alice Tully Hall. And the 9th Annual Black Girl Magic Ball: MATRIARCHS began.

Founded and curated by Dr. Mahogany L. Browne — author, activist, and Lincoln Center's first-ever Poet-in-Residence and presented in conjunction with the National Black Theatre, the evening was built around this year's theme of MATRIARCHS: the ancestral memory, artistic expression, and living legacy of Black women across generations. Hosted by culture critic and multi-talented artist Amanda Seales, it was an evening that blended poetry, music, dance, spoken word, and cinematic storytelling into something that felt less like a show and more like a homecoming.

I sat in that room and I left changed. Here are the five moments I will never forget.

1. Qween Jean Accepts Her Honor and Gives the Room a Directive

If there was one moment that stopped every breath in that hall, it was this one.

Qween Jean — LGBT+ rights activist, costume designer for Broadway's Cats: The Jellicle Ball, and founder of Black Trans Liberation — is a woman who has spent her entire career refusing to separate who she is from what she does. Born in Haiti and raised in Miami, she learned to sew from her grandmother and went on to earn an MFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. She has designed over 80 theatrical productions, received an Obie Award for Excellence in Costume Design, and co-founded Black Trans Liberation in 2020 after two Black trans people were murdered weeks apart and the media largely looked away.

When she stepped to that microphone to accept her honor, she did not give a speech. She gave a testimony. She gave a battle cry. She gave a prayer.

"I have found my voice, my recipes, and my pathway to freedom. I stand before you here as a survivor and a child of a Black woman, carved from her ring and blessed by the Almighty."

She invoked Marsha P. Johnson and Breonna Taylor. She spoke of joy as medicine and the enemy's ongoing attempt to steal it. She called the room to name the attacks — on Black women's bodies, on their joy, on their history — and to refuse to be silenced by any of them. She named places where Black trans liberation is most urgently needed — from Haiti to Harlem, Palestine to Philadelphia, Idaho to Iran.

"Black women, we are worthy of protecting. Black women are worthy of love. We are not alone here."

The room erupted. And several people, including me needed a long moment to collect themselves before they could stand to applaud.

2. Patricia Smith Performs and Reminds Every Black Girl Who She Is

Before Patricia Smith took that stage, I knew her the way many writers do, through her words on a page, through her reputation as a four-time National Poetry Slam champion, through the decades of award-winning work she has produced as one of America's most celebrated poets. I knew her as one of Dr. Mahogany L. Browne's first workshop mentors. I knew her as a legend.

And then she performed. And knowing all of that did not prepare me for what it felt like to be in the room when she did.

She named the stereotypes. The twisted gospels. The screeched definitions of magic that try to tell Black women who they are and what they are worth. She named them one by one — and then she dismantled every single one of them with language so precise and so beautiful it felt like surgery.

"Don't you feel it, Black Girl? Right now, right here — underneath your sequins, your satin, your shine. You will find a sliver of style. It is yours to rest in, to scatter with stars, to douse with moonwash, and to be forever your dance floor."

The audience was on their feet before she even finished. And in the quiet after those last words landed and there was something in that room that can only be described as the sound of one thousand people remembering who they are.

3. Veronica Chambers Tells Us the Magic Is in the Making

Veronica Chambers has spent her entire career doing the quiet, powerful work of telling Black women's stories with precision, beauty and grace. As an award-winning author, editor and journalist she has written for the New York Times and published books that have shaped generations of Black writers including her memoir Mama's Girl, a coming-of-age story about growing up as the daughter of a Panamanian immigrant in Brooklyn that many Black women count as one of the first books that made them feel seen on a page.

When she accepted her honor at the Black Girl Magic Ball, she did not talk about herself. She talked about the literary foremothers who shaped her — Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni, Alice Walker — and then she turned to the room and gave everyone in it a gift.

"The magic is in the making. Don't just consume or be consumed. Make something. Make a poem or something in a pot. Make a plate or make a pilgrimage. Make a joyful noise when you wake up in the morning. Don't worry that it's too small, or that what you make won't be good enough, or that no one will notice. Make something anyway. The world needs your somethings more now than ever."

As a writer and a self-published author who has spent years making things — books, events, platforms, communities — I felt those words land somewhere permanent. I wrote them down in my notes immediately. I have not stopped thinking about them since.

4. The Performances Brought the House Down — Again and Again

One of the things that makes the Black Girl Magic Ball unlike any other event is the caliber of the performances and MATRIARCHS was the finest lineup the Ball has ever assembled.

Grammy-nominated singer Mumu Fresh opened a dimension in that room. Her voice carries the kind of authority that makes you stop whatever you are doing and simply listen. Jazz artist Melanie Charles was breathtaking in the most literal sense, she played multiple instruments and sang with such beauty that the audience fell completely silent before erupting into applause that went on and on.

Britton Smith brought pure, infectious joy to the stage — and then took it off the stage entirely. The performance became interactive. The whole room was moving, joining in, laughing, celebrating. It was the kind of moment that reminds you why live events cannot be replicated on a screen. You had to be in that room to feel what that felt like.

Performance artists Jamila Woods and Obbie West brought spoken word and movement that cut deep. Brooklyn's own AbunDance Company brought power and precision. 2025 NYC Youth Poet Laureate Kai D. Giovanni reminded a room full of adults why poetry in young hands is the future of this art form. And magician Nicole Cardoza brought a touch of pure wonder, all of it held together by the masterful sounds of DJ Libby Brothers.

And holding the entire evening together, guiding the room through every transition with sharp wit, deep heart and the kind of energy that makes every moment feel both urgent and joyful was Amanda Seales. She was hilarious. She was powerful. She was exactly the right person to host a night this big.

5. V Challenges Everyone in That Room — and Beyond

V — award-winning playwright, author, activist and performer, best known for creating The Vagina Monologues and co-founding City of Joy, a community for survivors of gender-based violence in the Congo accepted this year's Ally Honoree award and immediately made clear she did not want to be called an ally.

She called for solidarity instead. Something more daring. More direct. More consuming. More committed.

"When Black women are in the lead, we will be heading in the right direction."

She spoke to white people in particular , challenging them to stop walking away when the work gets hard, to excavate the supremacist history embedded in their DNA, to stop treating allyship as something they get credit for rather than something they owe. She named the institutions and foundations that have capitulated in recent months — cutting funding for DEI, banning books on racism and slavery, removing critical landmarks from history. And she challenged everyone in that room to raise the vibration. To call up collective magic. To refuse to be pulled under.

"May we call up our collective magic that it may melt ice into clear pools of compassion and love where no one is illegal and everyone belongs."

She ended by dedicating her honor to her sisters in the Congo, women whose bodies have been ravaged by war and violence and who still, she said, dance in a way she has never seen dancing. Raising the vibration so high it opens the world to the divine.

The room was still. And then it was not.

A Night That Cannot Be Replicated

When I walked out of Alice Tully Hall that night I stood on the sidewalk for a long moment before I could move. I had just been inside something that will be talked about for years. I had listened to legends speak. I had watched artists transform a thousand people in real time. I had been in a room where Black women were not just celebrated, they were held.

That is what the Black Girl Magic Ball has always been. And that is what Dr. Mahogany L. Browne and Jonathan McCrory built on March 26th, a space that proves, year after year, that when Black women are given a stage, a room, and the grace to simply exist, something extraordinary happens.

The Ball will return to Lincoln Center next year. There will be a room. There will be a stage. There will be one thousand seats.

Make sure you are in one of them.

ABOUT THE BLACK GIRL MAGIC BALL

The annual Black Girl Magic Ball is founded and curated by Dr. Mahogany L. Browne, Poet-in-Residence at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and presented in conjunction with the National Black Theatre. For more information visit BlackGirlMagicBall.org | LincolnCenter.org

Photo credits:

Stage - Lawrence Sumulong / © Lincoln Center

Red Carpet - Britton Renaissance Photography

VIP - Dennis Manuel