Vinny Fonseca

When it´s a downward spiral it's called decadence. 

I’ve always loved Frozen and I love changes as the tour progresses on(yay we’ll get Rain and Frozen now when it’s released on Blu-ray ,DVD or digitally). Frozen is perfect for Canada and the winter conditions we’re all having currently too. I’m ok with a few vocal issues especially for the first night of her performing it. I especially love the way she and the background dancer worked their black capes which reminds me of the video. Stunning… and of the performance playing out on the background screen too! I can’t imagine how beautiful this was in person. And it will only get better with each performance. 

So this was the original Frozen performance before it was changed to Rain during the last weeks of rehearsals, as I said before! Personally I prefer Rain as it’s more uplifting and I’m a whore for anything from Erotica, but this one’s pretty nice too. ✨

This performance alone REDEEMS COMPLETELY M to any bad vocal she has got:
What DOESN'T REDEEM M TO ME is that she left out this precious jewel from DVD/VHS.
 

This is such a cool fan review of the show last night from RJF at Pop Justice that I had to share. I hope you enjoy this read as much as I have….
So after spending about half an hour panicking in the longest, coldest queue ever to get into the stadium last night, it turned out... I must have been in the first thousand or so allowed into Golden Circle?!?!!! Gag the girls who actually paid for Early Entry a bit, I guess. But basically, there were so many bits where I could be just a few rows away from the stage. I had no idea where was technically best... so I just went for the end of the stage. Now, I am not a barrier girlie, friends. I honestly just don't care enough to put myself through it and normally I turn up to get a decent midway spot which is what I thought I was doing, but I luck appeared to be on my side so I just fucking went for it, toilet and drinks be damned. I have never been that close to the stage at an arena show. I was vibrating!!!! Well maybe not after standing there for the next two hours waiting for her to come on but all was forgotten when the lights went down.

Last night was really just perfect, honestly. Conceptually, the show is just a total masterpiece. I remember when this tour was announced - this greatest hits tour that we all thought she would never do - and even in our wildest dreams I don't think any of us could have imagined it being a two hour invite into the maelstrom of Madonna's mind. At the beginning of last night in that absolutely merciless run of early 80s smashes, I thought I had things pegged: a chronological show, a stylised life story, cool! I was all in! ...but then I should have realised. As "Holiday" guttered out into a desperate plea, the disco ball slowed to a crawl, her dancer ebbed away, and "In This Life" (?!?!?!??!??!!?!?!!?111!11111!) started, I actually thought of that haughty post in here a few weeks ago being all, "I paid for a greatest hits show!!!" and reminded myself of my own words: this was a show for her first, and us second. In fact, she even told us what kind of show this was going to be the moment we saw the imagery: iconography, distorted and warped. Not a discography, but the performance of a life, remembered and misremembered. Sometimes coherent and correct, and sometimes wild hazy and inaccurate.

The staging is... yet another example of her show pushing the medium forward. I actually went to Fotografiska earlier that day and weirdly I felt that it prepared me for what she had in store? The way the screens constantly shifting and moving feel more like someone trying to organise their thoughts as things flicker in and out of focus; how sometimes things overwhelm and overpower. The AIDS memorial was instantly one of the best things she's ever done on stage; how her floating mournfully around it felt like some kind of solemn recollection and a gallery/museum preserving these memories rolled into one. Of course they're also just used to blast you with how much of a QUEEN she is, but they're used really artfully too. Stuff like during "Mother & Father" where she, tiny, is singing up to the monolithic, untouchable portrait of her mother... chills. I also have no real concrete problems with the setlist; I at least understand the logic and reasoning behind all the choices made, some of them were a gag (Erotica ATE!!!) and each suite after the cheery 80s gauntlet becoming something more abstract was really interesting. Less about representing a time period and more about representing an attitude, or a state of mind. The pacing of the middle is wildas things lurch between deep cuts, smash hits, and utterly random connections (Human Nature/Crazy For You and I Will Survive/La Isla/Don't Cry?!?!??!!!!) with all varying tempos... It's chaos... but Madonna is chaos. And we are merely guests for a time in this, the palace of her mind. A hitmaker, a performer, a ferocious deity, a woman, an activist, an advocate, and most importantly to her these days, a parent.

She's also human. Seeing her up close was an incredible reminder of that. After I recovered from being about five people away from her, I was struck by the fact that... she's a person? Tiny in real life and every single inch of her purpose-built for a two hour show, but still just... vulnerable in a way I never think of her as. It was during the third act when she's in the red lingerie, fully exposed, but still entirely in control. There were also moments where she was of course invincible like the fucking silver bodysuit?!?!?!?1/!?! I live.

The whole thing was just a much needed reminder of how singular she is... and how much she means to me. The pandemic really did a number on my relationship with her music and with this forum; I'll never regret the work I put into the discography rate but it came at a cost, sacrificing memories and associations songs originally had until it was just a spreadsheet and the fucking wall I would stare at between paragraphs when I was doing write ups. I really needed this show to fix that. A pilgrimage to pop's capital to see its Queen and remember why I swore fealty in the first place! It was the hunt for tickets that brought me back to all of you full-time as well, I'm sure some of you will be thrilled to know. It was similar to Dua's tour last year; I needed new memories to obliterate the old ones, and well... I got them in spades. I'll remember it for the rest of my life, I hope.

No one else will ever be like her. Ever.

This might be my favorite clip yet 
 

Eight things we learned from Madonna’s nights of Celebration in London
 
The Guardian takes in a dazzling start to a tour showcasing a career that set the template for modern pop stardom
Laura Snapes
Fri 20 Oct 2023 12.04 EDT
By the end of her four-night stint in London in the past week, Madonna’s status as pop’s ultimate survivor was assured.
Four months ago, it was uncertain whether she would be able to begin her Celebration tour, showcasing a career that set the template for modern pop stardom.
She was hospitalised in June with a life-threatening bacterial infection that left her in intensive care, and observers doubted the 65-year-old would recover in time. As did she.
“I’m pretty damn surprised I made it this far,” she said on the first night. “And I mean that on many levels.”
A total of 80,000 fans packed into the O2 Arena this week and, despite technical hitches on several nights, the tour earned four- and five-star reviews. Critics praised its canny assessment of her musical, cultural and societal impact – although
some tabloids balked at its proud display of her sexuality.
Here, the Guardian looks through her typically dazzling start.
Community at her core
Madonna with her dancers. Photograph: Kevin Mazur/WireImage for Live Nation
Madonna would never have become the star she is without finding a community in 80s New York queer culture, as the Celebration tour made plain. Her dancers were largely Black, Latin, queer and trans, and the exuberance between them felt gorgeous and sincere.
The show’s greatest stylistic influence is ballroom culture, which she first showcased in her 1990 hit Vogue. Her foregrounding of the artform – such as judging a ball competition and having the RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Bob the Drag Queen as an MC – felt like an authentic acknowledgment of a mutually loving bond.
That was underlined by a profoundly moving tribute to her peers and the community lost to Aids: the giant disco ball that twirled during Holiday slumped to the ground, crushing a male dancer. As she started Live to Tell, screens revealed portraits of late friends including Freddie Mercury, Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe and Peter Hujar. She sang to them on a suspended platform, the images multiplying so fast you could no longer make out the men’s individual identities.
Madonna on stage with Bob the Drag Queen at the O2 Arena in London on Sunday. Photograph: Kevin Mazur/WireImage for Live Nation
She’s still scrappy five decades in
Starting three months later than planned, said the musical director Stuart Price, “created an opportunity to further enhance the show”. The performance was full of spectacular set pieces – a spinning carousel filled with muscular male dancers; flying stages; enough biblical symbolism to fill the Vatican – but it also felt thrillingly haphazard, befitting the young Madonna’s make-or-break attitude. That was dramatised in the prelude to Holiday, staged on the steps of famed New York nightclub Paradise Garage with Madonna begging the bouncer to be let in while gorgeous queens sauntered past. It also came through in her seemingly off-the-cuff addresses: beer in hand, remembering her early days playing at punk club CBGB’s before a brilliant guitar-led rendition of Burning Up; beer also in hand on night three as she talked about her anguish over the Israel-Hamas war.
Age is no match for her
Madonna on the opening night of the Celebration tour in London. Photograph: Kevin Mazur/WireImage for Live Nation
One of the most moving aspects of the Celebration tour is its reflection of how much Madonna has had to overcome: poverty and risk as a young dancer in New York; ferocious censure; pop’s ever-present threat of obsolescence. Then there is also the sheer passage of time: the toxic combination of misogyny and ageism, not to mention the physical limitations that a body – and a dancer’s relentlessly flogged body, at that – can take. Madonna has been confronting the former for more than half her life. “The most controversial thing I’ve done is to stick around,” she said in voiceover – a clip from an awards acceptance speech – as newspaper clips lambasting her age spin across the backdrop. But she’s also vanquished the latter: executing a show this physical just four months after her hospitalisation is an astonishing feat; her undisguised knee support sleeve also read as an unapologetic acknowledgment of the exertion and bodily toll entailed in performing at this level aged 65. Her acoustic cover of Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive was well earned – and her voice sounded formidable.
Conquering new sexual frontiers
Madonna writhes on stage with a lookalike. Photograph: Kevin Mazur/WireImage for Live Nation
Nobody has made sexuality into iconography like Madonna. But there was a point behind – almost – every cone bra and shred of latex as she protested prudishness and hypocrisy, sent up the absurdity of the virgin-whore dichotomy and foregrounded eroticism during an era where sexuality could become a death sentence. Onstage, her age added a new dimension to this lifelong mission as she revelled in her status as an object of desire and an enduringly sexual being.
Family is everything
Madonna and her son David Banda perform her song Mother and Father. Photograph: Kevin Mazur/WireImage for Live Nation
During the song Mother and Father, Madonna sang to an image of her mother, while her son David Banda played guitar in front of a screen of his late birth mother. Madonna’s daughters also featured: Lourdes Leon helped judge the drag ball on night one, Mercy James played piano beautifully on Bad Girl and – stealing the show – 11-year-old Estere deejayed and vogued. And in respect of her queer and marginalised fans, she hymned chosen family – the support networks that many people create in the face of rejection and persecution at home.
Wackiness is part of the enterprise
The first half of the tour plots a fairly linear path through Madonna’s history. But once she passed the early 90s, narrative went out of the window in favour of the relative chaos that has become her modern calling card. There were samples of Sam Smith and Kim Petras’s provocative hit Unholy (albeit not Vulgar, Madonna’s actual duet with Smith), a delightful spotlight on the Dominican rapper Tokischa and a strange interlude for The Beast Within, in which Madonna’s dancers trudged through a desert landscape reminiscent of a Star Wars prequel.
Controversy remains her second language
Madonna in full iconoclast mode on stage. Photograph: Kevin Mazur/WireImage for Live Nation
There were, of course, a few flagrant provocations: having paid tribute to Prince, with a purple-costumed guitarist ripping a guitar solo at the end of Like a Prayer, she also included a mashup of Like a Virgin with various Michael Jackson hits, while silhouettes of the two frolicked on screen in reference to their on-screen romance. And on night three, she expanded on her previous allusions to the Israel-Hamas war, lamenting the children killed in the conflict and advocating for “no sanctions, no land given or taken”.
Her star power remains
Despite the tour’s focus on Madonna’s fallibility, it was impossible not to behold the fact the actual Madonna was right there, running through a recent history that felt more like mythology.
Betsy Reed
Editor, Guardian US

Watching the lighting ascend in this video in the first 20 seconds and as the songs begins, it's like a nuclear blast!  So awesome looking:
 

I was gutted they didn't include the 'Here comes the sun...' bridge in Rain. That's literally the BEST part!!! 

This video of Rain shows a quite close perspective, her face and expressions are top notch 
 https://www.facebook.com/madonnauniversepage/videos/708828887771209 
... and that smile

 

He may also be a reference to the Truth or Dare documentary. 

He may also be a reference to the Truth or Dare documentary. 

He may also be a reference to the Truth or Dare documentary. 

Some nice pics and a 20 minutes long front row video from last night show 
(the costume for LAP looks the same as the Blond Ambition PDP one by the way and the only hair/costume look I don't like is the 80s set one)


Holiday and Open your heart are sooo nice though

Burning Up could've been replaced by Gambler, Over and Over or even Borderline.
The Beast Within is unnecessary. 
Crazy for You could've made room for You'll See.
Rain deserved a full performance.
Frozen should've been included.
That Michael Jackson thing should've been scrapped. An interlude with a mix of unperformed songs should be added instead (similar to the one she used before Turn Up the radio on the MDNA Tour),
Gimme All Your Luvin' and BIM are cringe and should have something else in their place, maybe Give it 2 Me. 
 
 
 
 
 

Burning Up could've been replaced by Gambler, Over and Over or even Borderline.
The Beast Within is unnecessary. 
Crazy for You could've made room for You'll See.
Rain deserved a full performance.
Frozen should've been included.
That Michael Jackson thing should've been scrapped. An interlude with a mix of unperformed songs should be added instead (similar to the one she used before Turn Up the radio on the MDNA Tour),
Gimme All Your Luvin' and BIM are cringe and should have something else in their place, maybe Give it 2 Me. 
 
 
 
 
 

Could you please give me the address

Bob and the beast within number can go 👌🏻

Was Bob the Drag Queen really needed? I thought he was messy and a distraction. 
 

I could care less if @Dazedmadonnais wrong or right(and I’m pretty sure it’s the latter),he and this team made this journey til today a blast and worked tirelessly at promoting Madonna. Please if you want kindness and respect from others, be kind and grateful back. And wanting more and more and more is not cool either especially knowing a person can only tease so much. Just be happy with any teasers for what’s been able to be released. Think about it before you press the “submit reply” button again. It’s a Madonna Holiday. Now let’s dance! 
 

Here is the video:-

Hidden Content
Give reaction to this post to see the hidden content.

It sounds like 1:20
 

Now this is what I'm talking about.  A true spoiler.  THANK YOU!  Love that round platform stage, which I'm betting will be rotating around at some point.  And look at the disco ball!!  YES!!!  So exicting!!  Thank you for sharing!!  You provided some goods!! Thank you!

I’d rather have PA than old boring LAV 😂
I don’t get the obsession with Rescue Me. I love it but she doesn’t have that voice anymore. I’d rather have a ballad (This Used/I’ll Remember/You’ll See).