“Alicia Bares Her Soul”

Alicia Keys, photographed exclusively for the November issue of Ebony magazine by Gian Andreas Di Stefano at nightclub Hiro at the Maritime Hotel in Manhattan in 2007.

Lead acrobatic dancer Tatyana Petruk of Aerial Artistry taught Alicia how to suspend in the air for her cover shoot. Working with the creative team nonstop until the singer left to go to the premiere of The Nanny Diaries. 

Harriette Cole of Ebony writes: “There’s nothing ordinary about superstar Alicia Keys. So we decided to go for something extraordinary in the creation of this cover story,” 

“EBONY’S photo director, Dudley Brooks, and I presented her with the concept of showcasing the Many Moods of Alicia Keys—from the fantastic to the ethereal, the vulnerable to the invincible. She was game! We booked time in an amazing space, a nightclub called Hiro, in the bowels of the Maritime Hotel in Manhattan. Little did we know that acrobatic dancers work nights there. We enlisted the support of Tatyana Petruk, the lead dancer at Hiro, to teach Alicia how to position herself on a ring suspended in mid-air. We wanted to invite the Superwoman in Alicia to come forth. Suffice it to say that we were not disappointed!” “She was completely willing to go with the flow of Alicia—sharing the fullness of her with us, with the EBONY readers—as she offers this newest expression of her creativity, her third studio album, As I Am.”