Madonna's MDNA-Tour has started

Tour\pop

With a concert at the Ramat Gan stadium in Tel Aviv, Madonna began a world tour in support of her latest album MDNA. In Ukraine, the show will be shown on August 4 at the NSC Olimpiysky in Kyiv. About what awaits the audience - BORIS BARABANOV.

A kind of teaser for the new show was Madonna's February performance at halftime of the final game of the Super Bowl in American football at the stadium in Indianapolis. The video went viral on the Internet and helped the singer's newest album MDNA enter the Billboard chart in first place with 359 thousand copies sold in the United States in the first week after release. However, it would be wrong to form an impression of the entire MDNA-Tour show based on this video. From him in the new program only the girls cheerleaders in “Gimme All Your Luvin`” and the gospel choir in “Like A Prayer” remained.

In the last Sticky And Sweet tour, Madonna successfully integrated the gypsy “Kolpakov Trio” into the show and thus found a completely killer combination of basic production elements: advanced technology plus a dance beat plus the sincerity of world music. In MDNA-Tour, the Kalakan Trio is responsible for sincerity and roots - three young Basques performing ancient music ranging from Gregorian chorales to Georgian polyphonies. The counterbalance to the vocal landscapes of the Kalakan Trio is the traditional DJ beat for Madonna's shows, generated by her MDNA recording partners Benny Benassi, LMFAO, William Orbit, Martin Solveig and other masters of the club sound, many of whom will open for Madonna during the tour (in Tel- Aviva it was Martin Solveig).

Finally, there were some technical innovations. The Canadian company Moment Factory assembled a stage for the MDNA-Tour from 36 elevators covered with plasma panels, capable of changing the terrain of the stage in a matter of seconds. The stage seems to be breathing. Now Madonna can, right in front of the audience, reproduce a trick familiar to Bond fans: the hero runs, and the ground under his feet literally collapses into tartar. Sade carried similar structures with her on her last tour, but Madonna has taken this technology to the absolute level. For example, during the performance of the best of the new songs, “Masterpiece,” the singer is surrounded by accompanists and dancers, thoughtfully listening to the patroness. And there is a moment in this song, if you miss it, if you turn away for half a second, you simply won’t understand where all this escort has gone. Dissolves in the air, nothing less.

In addition to technology, there are also wonders of acrobatics. Madonna has been eyeing Cirque Du Soleil for a long time, and the drummers hanging on the lounges - this, for example, can still be somehow predicted. But here's another episode - a video clip of all kinds of street riots from all over the world is accompanied by tightrope walkers performing exercises on several strings stretched above the stage. And a few bars before the finale, they all freeze on their shells, motionless. Which, in the opinion of those initiated into the circus craft, is impossible, because the tightrope walker is constantly balancing and moving. By the way, during the song “Hung Up” Madonna herself walks on a tightrope.

Madonna is not Britney Spears; tricks and technology are not a reason for her to hide her weakness. A week before the premiere in Tel Aviv, she drove into the stadium along with the entire caravan and rehearsed from morning to evening, drilling the troupe. The first half hour of the show is also psychologically difficult work. The meat is beaten with hammers. Blood splashes all over the huge screen, where the church vaults had just darkened. "Kalashnikov", rituals of voodoo priests, dancers in gas masks. "I'd go down to hell just to shoot you in the head again." Of course, in the end the forces of good win. In Tel Aviv, Madonna gave a heartfelt speech about how everyone’s blood is the same color, and people of good will need to rise above religious and national strife and join hands so as not to perish alone. And in general, she chose the Middle East as the starting point of the new tour because it is time for everyone to make peace here, and if they make peace here, then they will make peace everywhere too.

The most powerful episode of the show was the performance of the song "Like A Virgin" in a cabaret setting in a slow waltz at the feet of a black pianist. It was head and shoulders above all the most daring reworkings of this thing. At the same time, today's versions of the hits "Vogue" and "Like A Prayer" meticulously reproduce the arrangements of 20-25 years ago and do not get lost against the background of the current beat. Madonna is cool today, but she's always been cool.

Newspaper "Kommersant Ukraine" No. 88 dated 06/07/2012, p. 4

Authors:

Boris Barabanov

Dancing with Kalashnikov