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She narrowly lost the 16th season crown on RuPaul’s Drag Race, but Sapphira Cristál proved she’s always been a winner during her Cristál Ball Tour’s Portland stop July 13 at the Aladdin Theater.
Local drag artist Mona Chrome opened for Cristál, whipping her rainbow locks to Beyoncé's “Upgrade U,” lip syncing to her and Jay-Z’s verses. Wearing her hair in a wheel-like set of braids, Cristál—persona of the artist O’Neill Haynes—emerged in the first of several looks repurposed from her Drag Race run, performing an operatic fakeout entry. Haynes is a trained opera singer who attended the same church and high school as Knowles-Carter, and proudly calls the late mixed martial arts coach Saul Soliz her father. She recalled how Soliz brought champion fighter Ricco Rodriguez to one of her shows, clarifying that she didn’t mean the similarly named Modern Family actor who she had earlier said attended her high school.
The franchise’s newest Miss Congeniality showcased her diverse repertoire to an enraptured audience, who cheered loud enough to trigger tinnitus, but was quiet enough when needed for passing train whistles to rip through Cristál’s more poignant moments. Switching from lip sync to monologue to audience games and live dancing and singing both pop and opera, all in sickening costumes, Cristál was a shining testament to the power of self-love.