Memorable trip with Madonna | The Press

Celebration, the show that Madonna presents twice this week at the Bell Center, is much more than a simple party that invites you to dance. It is an ingenious and sometimes touching journey through time which celebrates an artistic journey like no other: that of a woman who, at 65, still finds a way to surprise.

We have read and repeated in recent days that we should be patient: since December, the queen mother of pop has often entered the scene quite late. Often after 10 p.m., the time when many of his peers who perform in amphitheaters like the Bell Center arrive for encore.

On Thursday, Madonna started the party “early”: she was on stage at 9:50 p.m. She made an imperial entrance, but quite sober, appearing alone on a turntable, dressed in a loose, shiny black dress and wearing a ‘a tiara. She was singing Nothing Really Mattersa piece taken from his album Ray Of Light.

The rotating stage on which the star entered the stage was the central element of an immense stage arrangement occupying a large part of the Bell Center floor and which also included three long walkways extending far into the enclosure. This stage equipment promised exceptional proximity for many of the spectators located on the floor and in the lowest sections of the stands. It is also the most imposing stage arrangement that the author of these lines has seen in this amphitheater in more than 20 years of covering shows.

This scenography exuded something generous, which boded well for the future.

Madonna leads the way

The start of the concert was delightful: Madonna performed danceable songs from the 1980s which quickly transformed the Bell Center into a huge dance floor. Among other things, it emerged, not necessarily in this order, Everybody (his very first single), Holidaymakes the crowd sing a part of Causing a Concussiontaken back Open Your Heart and the irresistible Into the Groove.

We already didn’t know where to look, trying to follow Madonna step by step, but also to gorge ourselves on the choreographed numbers, delivered by at least two dozen dancers. The venerable pop star no longer has the vigor she always had at age 48, during the Confessions Tour – she now leaves the acrobatics and technical prowess to her accompanists – but it was still she who led the dance for more than two hours.

Madonna is now 65, and on Thursday she looked ageless among performers much younger than her. Her charisma is complete, she remains the conquering, sensual, slobbering and provocative woman that she has always been. There is only one scene where she seems less good: when, late in the show, she sings Ray Of Light by swaying awkwardly in a basket that hovers above the crowd. This detail aside, seeing her sing, play, dance and move air like this commands respect.

Evocative paintings

Madonna announced it early in the performance: Celebration tells a story, his own. In music, of course: his program draws on 40 years of significant songs, with a clear preference for his first 25 years. There is almost nothing on his disk Like A Virginbut she covers danceable anthems like Vogue, Like A Prayer, Bonita Island and a piece of Hung Upfor example, but also paints surprising pictures by bringing back more murky pieces like the double Erotica And Justify My Loveparticularly successful.

This spectacle constructed in scenes obviously constitutes a sonic journey: there is a world between the embryonic electro of Everybody, the copy and paste aesthetic of Don’t Tell Me and the almost trance of Ray Of Light. These differences were obvious given that, even if many pieces were truncated, the majority were based on the original sounds (and even tracks?).

Here and there, Madonna dared. She did Express Yourself alone on acoustic guitar in the middle of the course. Earlier in the evening, while the images projected on giant screens recalled her New York beginnings and the emblematic club of the Lower East Side at the turn of the 1980s – CBGB’s, associated with the punk and new wave scene – she made Burning Up in rock version on electric guitar.

This desire to tell Madonna’s story also runs through the staging of the show. Archive images evoke one or other of its transformations, costumes worn by its dancers recall its most significant incarnations and numbers refer directly to shows of yesteryear. The most significant example being the one where a dancer, dressed like Madonna’s version Blond Ambition Tourremakes the famous masturbation scene.

Celebration will undoubtedly rank among the Queen of Pop’s richest and most successful shows. In addition to being convincing on a narrative and musical level (despite a sound system that is sometimes unnecessarily deafening and saturated), it demonstrates great finesse in terms of visual effects.

Madonna also makes almost no missteps. She is not at all convincing when she calls for changing the world other than through kindness, but is more than once very touching, particularly when she talks about the struggles for equality led by LBGTQ+ communities. and the tragedy of AIDS. His felt interpretation of Live to tell, accompanied by photos of victims of this terrible epidemic is by far the most moving moment of the show.

Also Saturday, 8:30 p.m., at the Bell Center.