Finally, a performing arts center is about performance. And finally, after years, yes, decades of planning, they were performing in the AT&T Performing Arts Center on Wednesday.For Scene 1, the first of four gala evenings, all Dallas, or as much of it as could squeeze into the 600 sherbet-green armchairs, filed into the Wyly Theatre for the first performance in the venue, slowly winding up the narrow staircase or piling into the elevators that crawl up the east side of the aluminum-pipe exterior. Wednesday’s program will repeat on Friday.Colored lights, artfully aimed, penetrated the lofty, dramatic black-walled space. Then host Bruce Willis introduced the evening’s entertainment – not before calling the innovative building “technically incomprehensible.”

The two architects, former partners Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramos, quite separately visited with groups of fans in the underground lobby as the audience waited to enter all at once. Mayor Tom Leppert, donors and press from all over the world sampled champagne, sushi and guacamole as cameramen jostled for angles.

He also toyed with the audience’s expectations a bit.

“Want to hear me sing?” he leered. “No-o-o way.” 

First up were excerpts from writer-director James Lapine’s current East Coast project, Mrs. Miller Does Her Thing, starring Broadway headliner Debra Monk. (You might know her as George’s mother on Gray’s Anatomy or the first Mrs. Sipowicz on NYPD Blue.)

Willis had to start the second half before half the audience was back in its seats, and a number of members never returned to the show, which was running a hour or so late. Rapping performance artist Will Power, accompanied by DJ Reborn, did scenes from ancient Thebes and his neighborhood and brought down the house with a tribute to his grandmother.

And finally, multiple Oscar winner Alan Menken (Beauty and the Beast ), accompanying himself on piano, proved that nobody can sing a song like its composer. What better way to top off a glamorous evening than an invitation to “Be Our Guest”?  [Source]