Crucifixes, Leather and Hits

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The dancing queen of spectacle concerts, Madonna has the unique ability to transform garish production values into powerful autobiography. The opening Los Angeles date of Madonna’s Confessions Tour wasn’t a reinvention so much as it was a refinement of the elaborately choreographed, sexually provocative extravaganza she created with 1990’s Blond Ambition Tour. As its title implies, Confessions is very much all about Madonna.

After making her descent to the stage in a giant disco ball, Madonna sang a medley of ”Future Lovers” and Donna Summer’s synth milestone ”I Feel Love” in Jean-Paul Gaultier-designed equestrian drag while ridinghunky male dancers similarly clad in S&M-inspired harnesses. For a ballsy, full-voiced rendition of ”Like a Virgin,” she mounted a studded leather merry-go-round saddle as video screens flashed X-ray photos. Only Madonna could deliver a seriously hot pole dance while referencing her bone-cracking tumble from a horse on her forty-seventh birthday last August.

Less successful was her organ-laden version of ”Live to Tell,” which found the singer strapped to a mirrored crucifix as African AIDS statistics flashed onscreen — the show’s tone darkening so suddenly that this potentially poignant image instead came across as bombast. ”Forbidden Love” redeemed the sequence: A pair of male dancers interlocked arms in an understated, mesmerizing ritual that thesinger joined.

For ”I Love New York,” she broke out a guitar to paraphrase the slashing chords of the Stooges’ ”I Wanna Be Your Dog,” and strutted up and down her catwalk with Iggy Pop-ian abandon for ”Let It Will Be.” Paying tribute to Saturday Night Fever, Madonna peaked the concert with an ingenious mash-up of the Trammps’ classic ”Disco Inferno” and her own ”Music.”

Throughout the show, Madonna voiced her continued dissatisfaction with fame even as she justified her own. It’s an old complaint, but when Madonna celebrated her gift for substantial glitz, she seemed nearly as youthful as when her lucky star began rising a long, long time ago.

Madonna Confessions Tour Dates

Aug. 03 London Wembley Arena
Aug. 06 Rome Olympic Stadium
Aug. 09 London Wembley Arena
Aug. 10 London Wembley Arena
Aug. 12 London Wembley Arena
Aug. 13 London Wembley Arena
Aug. 15 London Wembley Arena
Aug. 16 London Wembley Arena
Aug. 20 Dusseldorf LTU Arena
Aug. 22 Hannover Niedersachsen
Aug. 24 Horsens (Denmark) Forum Horsens Outdoor
Aug. 27 Paris Bercy Stadium
Aug. 28 Paris Bercy Stadium
Aug. 30 Paris Bercy Stadium
Aug. 31 Paris Bercy Stadium
Sept. 03 Amsterdam Arena
Sept. 04 Amsterdam Arena
Sept. 06 Prague Sazka Arena
Sept. 07 Prague Sazka Arena

Barry Walters

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Madonna Launches Tour With Disco Crucifixion

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Though Madonna’s latest world tour has been dubbed the Confessions tour in honor of the singer’s latest album, Confessions on a Dance Floor, the trek, which began Sunday night before a sold-out audience at L.A.’s hallowed Forum, was much more Cirque du Soleil than a night of intimate revelation.Descending from the heavens at a quarter to nine in a ton-and-a-half disco ball — covered in 2 million dollars? worth in crystals — Madonna began the “Equestrian” portion of the show (the nearly two-hour show was broken down into four sections) with Confessions’ “Future Lover.” Clad in horseback-riding attire, complete with top hat and riding crop, she moved around the stage’s center inlet, which stretched halfway through the floor, before making her way to center to pay homage to another disco queen, with Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love.” She returned to the new album for “Get Together,” performing the song without much assistance from her cadre of backup dancers — and proving why the disco-tinged track is one of the album’s high points.

But since the majority of the frenzied throng paid as much as $350 a ticket for some high-powered spectacle, Madonna would not let the faithful down. And she didn’t: The pop diva rode a mechanical saddle/stripper pole during “Like a Virgin” and displayed her gymnastics skills in “Jump.” Madonna re-emerged for the “Bedouin” portion of the evening on a mammoth disco crucifix wearing a crown of thorns to perform “Live to Tell.” She returned to religious imagery for Confession’s “Isaac,” which featured a woman dancing in a cage. The singer showed some of that who-gives-a-fuck attitude that first made her a star with “Like It or Not,” a rendition spiked by her burlesque-style dancing with a chair. And that was only in the first half of the evening.

Changing costumes again for the “Never Mind the Bollocks” section, Madonna came out rocking an electric guitar for “I Love New York,” which featured projections of the city skyline on a large video screen. She held the guitar while exhorting the crowd to dance for a hard-rocking version of the title track of Ray of Light. In keeping with the theme of this portion, the background dancers reemerged, New Wave’d out in black-and-white ties.

Madonna’s career has been marked by her chameleon-like ability to reinvent herself, and indeed, in the annals of pop music, her talent in that category may be second only to David Bowie’s. Throughout the night, she continually assumed new roles — even playing the balladeer remarkably well, in renditions of “Drowned World” and “Paradise (Not for Me),” the latter of which was a duet with Yitzhak Sinwani, whom she introduced as her friend.

The singer’s most recent role in the pop world has been dance diva, and she assumed that mantle proudly for the evening’s final “Disco” theme. Emerging to the beat of the Tramps’ “Disco Inferno” in a John Travolta-style white suit (circa Saturday Night Fever, of course), Madonna became the dancing queen for high-energy versions of “Music,” “La Isla Bonita” (complete witha cavalcade of dancers and tropical-island images), a techno-fied “Lucky Star” and the closer, “Hung Up.” With the climax of that runaway single, gold balloons descended from the rooftops.

Madonna had played many roles in the first night of her Confessions tour — but confessor was not one of them. Apparently, in all the pomp and circumstance, there was no room for warmth, or even the attitude that made her recent Coachella festival performance so memorable.

Performing at Coachella before a largely foreign audience, she appeared as the Madonna of old: defiant, hungry, ready to fight. A determined Madonna, one who might spar with the crowd, seemed largely absent this weekend at the Forum. She limited her interaction to platitudes like, “Are you ready for aride, L.A.?,” “The show is just beginning!” and “Put on your dancing shoes.”

Then again, she didn’t have anything to prove to these fans. They got exactly what they wanted on this night: a celebration of all things Madonna, for better or worse.

Madonna Confessions Tour Dates

Aug. 03 London Wembley Arena
Aug. 06 Rome Olympic Stadium
Aug. 09 London Wembley Arena
Aug. 10 London Wembley Arena
Aug. 12 London Wembley Arena
Aug. 13 London Wembley Arena
Aug. 15 London Wembley Arena
Aug. 16 London Wembley Arena
Aug. 20 Dusseldorf LTU Arena
Aug. 22 Hannover Niedersachsen
Aug. 24 Horsens (Denmark) Forum Horsens Outdoor
Aug. 27 Paris Bercy Stadium
Aug. 28 Paris Bercy Stadium
Aug. 30 Paris Bercy Stadium
Aug. 31 Paris Bercy Stadium
Sept. 03 Amsterdam Arena
Sept. 04 Amsterdam Arena
Sept. 06 Prague Sazka Arena
Sept. 07 Prague Sazka Arena

Steve Baltin

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Madonna Tour Tickets Selling Quickly

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Initial ticket sales for Madonnna’s upcoming Confessions tour have been predictably huge, with shows added in several cities and virtually all dates selling out.

The tour, which begins May 21 in Los Angeles, has sold out four shows in Paris at Bercy Stadium beginning August 27, seven shows at London’s Wembley Arena beginning August 1, two shows at the 40,000-capacity Amsterdam Arena beginning September 3, and four shows in New York’s Madison Square Garden beginning June 28, as well as doubles in Los Angeles, Montreal, Miami and Chicago.

Also sold out are Las Vegas (May 27), Philadelphia (July 12), Hartford, Conn. (June 25), Phoenix (June 8) and San Jose (May 30).

Tour producer Arthur Fogel, president of Live Nation’s TNA International, told Billboard.com there had clearly been no resistance to ticket prices that range from $50 to $350. “What you have is a recognition that she creates and delivers a spectacular show every time she goes on the road,” said Fogel. “And this tour will be no different.”

With a gross potential in the $200 million range, Confessions could be the top-grossing tour ever for a female artist. In 2004, Madonna’s Re-Invention tour grossed $125 million and drew more than 900,000 fans to 56 shows.

Ray Waddell

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Madonna Ready To Dance On Summer Tour

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As expected, Madonna will hit the road this summer in support of her 2005 album “Confessions on a Dance Floor.” The tour will begin May 21 in Los Angeles and has dates on tap through a Sept. 3 show in Amsterdam. Contrary to scuttlebutt that the outing would play smaller venues than usual, the Confessions tour will visit arenas throughout the world.

The show itself will “be all out disco, with lots of disco balls,” Madonna told Billboard last summer. “I would focus on dance music and the new record. I already did the older stuff on my Re-Invention tour.” That outing grossed $125 million, according to Billboard Boxscore.

The tour will feature direction by Jamie King, music direction by Stuart Price and costume design by Arianne Phillips and Jean Paul Gaultier.

As previously reported, Madonna will warm up for Confessions with the first festival performance of her career on April 30 at Coachella in Indio, Calif.

Here are Madonna’s tour dates:

April 30: Indio, Calif. (Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival)
May 21: Los Angeles (Forum)
May 27: Las Vegas (MGM Grand Garden Arena)
May 30: San Jose, Calif. (HP Pavilion)
June 5: Fresno, Calif. (Save Mart Center)
June 8: Phoenix (Glendale Arena)
June 14: Chicago (United Center)
June 21: Montreal (Bell Centre)
June 25: Hartford, Conn. (Civic Centre)
June 28-29: New York (Madison Square Garden)
July 6: Boston (TD Bank Garden)
July 12: Philadelphia (Wachovia Center)
July 16: Atlantic City, N.J. (Boardwalk Hall)
July 22: Miami (American Airlines Arena)
July 30: Cardiff, Wales (Millennium Stadium)
Aug. 1, 3: London (Wembley Arena)
Aug. 6: Rome (Olympic Stadium)
Aug. 20: Dusseldorf, Germany (LTU Arena)
Aug. 22: Hannover, Germany (AWD Arena)
Aug. 24: Horsens, Denmark (Forum)
Aug. 27-28: Paris (Bercy)
Sept. 3: Amsterdam (Arena)

Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.

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