The Celebration Tour (Spoilers)

[Donna 16,736]

12 minutes ago, madgefan said:

@Frank Ooh, you're an angel 

L.U.V..... @Frank!

 

[BuggedOut 4,123]

14 minutes ago, madgefan said:

@Frank Ooh, you're an angel 

We all  @Frank

 

[Donna 16,736]

To Prepare us for her stop in France:

The corset also defined Jean-Paul Gaultier’s career. Would it be fair to say that this was a win-win collaboration?

Absolutely. At the time, he was a young outsider in the fashion design world. He was shocking, he was scandalous, and he certainly didn’t have the prestige he has today. His intuition was right when he pitched his services to Madonna. Theirs was an artistic, almost political meeting of minds. Together, they created an extremely innovative masculine-feminine mix, a visual code that later inspired other singers

Full article:

https://france-amerique.com/madonna-and-france-a-long-lasting-love-story/

[Honey Little 4,102]

14 minutes ago, Pedro Beltran said:

Mr Churchill ex prime minister? Or is it some American expression I should be aware…

 Before starting a conversation about representation, interpretation and assertions about signs and correspondence of what symbols portrayed, Gourdjieff philosophy, Kabbalah’s own three of life and the 10 sefirots and its interpolation with choreography, music and meaning in DAD???

Please start this. I am curious to know what’s going on in Die Another Day in this tour.

[BuggedOut 4,123]

[Donna 16,736]

The infamous Gaultier Cone Bra

VS. TODAY

[Donna 16,736]

The Story Behind Madonna’s Iconic Jean Paul Gaultier Cone Bra

On the first night of Madonna’s Blond Ambition tour, held in April 1990 in Chiba, Japan, few in the audience could have prepared themselves for the spectacle about to unfold. With its $2 million dollar stage set, explosive choreography by voguing legends from the New York City ballroom scene, and headline-grabbing aesthetic fusion of Catholic imagery and BDSM, the show solidified Madonna’s position at the top of music’s pantheon. In less than two hours, she was no longer just a pop star—she had graduated to become a fully-fledged pop culture icon.

For her most avid fans, though, it was less of a surprise: Madonna was merely following up on the string of controversies that accompanied her latest album, Like a Prayer, a year earlier. A $5 million sponsorship deal with Pepsi was swiftly pulled after she debuted the video for her lead single, “Like a Prayer,” the plot of which implicitly drew a link between racial injustice and organized religion. Featuring Ku Klux Klan-style burning crosses and Madonna receiving the stigmata, it led to a direct call from the Vatican to boycott Pepsi and its subsidiaries. “Art should be controversial, and that’s all there is to it,” Madonna told the New York Times with nonchalance in the lead-up to the album’s release. (This laid-back response may have been due to the fact that Pepsi, eager to extricate themselves from the kerfuffle, let Madonna keep the $5 million check.)

Yet outside of the pearl-clutching backlash that followed the tour’s debut, the image that would come to define it was far more modest, arriving within the first few minutes of the show. Sporting an artfully slashed pinstripe suit, Madonna levitated to the stage on a hydraulic platform. She held a monocle hanging off her necklace up to her eye, before launching into “Express Yourself.” Then, moments later, she and her backup dancers whipped off their jackets to reveal something a little more sexy.

The pink conical bra that Madonna wore underneath is so embedded within the canon of both pop music and fashion that it now requires little introduction. Designed by Jean Paul Gaultier, who Madonna personally requested to create the costumes for the tour (she even handwrote him a letter to express her admiration for his humorous take on fashion), the look was the product of many months of collaboration, with fittings taking place both in New York and Gaultier’s ateliers in Paris.

“When Madonna first called me in 1989, it was two days before my ready-to-wear show, and I thought my assistant was joking,” said Gaultier in a 2001 interview with the New York Times. “I was a big fan. She knew what she wanted—a pinstripe suit, the feminine corsetry. Madonna likes my clothes because they combine the masculine and the feminine.” Indeed, it was this gender-bending spirit that made the tour’s visuals so memorable; just take her male dancers, who threw flamboyant shapes while sporting Tom of Finland-esque leather lace-back tops paired with Bob Fosse bowler hats. (The less glamorous side of which was explored memorably in the 2016 documentary Strike a Pose, where these dancers, many of whom were living with HIV/AIDS, saw their hopes and aspirations either realized or heartbreakingly thwarted.)

 

What made Madonna’s take on this undergarment truly subversive, though, was its nuances. The cone bra grabbed the public’s attention for the way in which it rebelled against the narrow definition of the beautiful female body that, for so many centuries, had been dictated by corsetry’s body-morphing strictures. Sure, designers like Vivienne Westwood had also spent the ’80s exploring a more freeing, playful take on the corset, but Gaultier’s version—first debuted on the runway in 1987 before being adapted for the Blond Ambition tour—took the piece and made it feel defiant, aggressive even. In place of the soft curves the corset was supposed to shape, the female anatomy became a spiky, phallic weapon, one that Madonna celebrated by exerting her dominance, sexual or otherwise, over the dancers she frolicked with across her one-and-a-half-hour musical extravaganza. This was a pop star in control, and her outfits told the story before she even opened her mouth to sing, or began gyrating wildly across the stage (or simulated masturbation, in a sequence that almost resulted in her Toronto leg of the tour being shut down).

Gaultier would go on to collaborate with Madonna on multiple occasions, including a memorable appearance at Gaultier’s 1992 AIDS fundraising gala in support of amFAR, where she walked the runway in Los Angeles before dropping her jacket to reveal a bondage-inspired harness top that left her breasts fully exposed. “I love Madonna,” Gaultier added in his New York Times interview. “She’s the only woman I ever asked to marry me. She said no, of course, but every time she asks me to work on her shows, I can’t say no.” Thirty years after making its first debut, the cone bra is more than just a part of fashion history, or an artefact hanging in a museum. Its legacy lies in the very real way in which it has encouraged generations of female pop performers in Madonna’s wake to channel their sexuality through the outfits they choose to wear without shame, and on their own terms. To paraphrase Gaultier, who could say no to that?

[BuggedOut 4,123]

[Donna 16,736]

Madonna's first World tour in France:

 

[Pedro Beltran 4,649]

7 minutes ago, Honey Little said:

Please start this. I am curious to know what’s going on in Die Another Day in this tour.

It’s a complicated analysis because meanwhile so much of Madonnas artistic output can be full of hidden meanings and very much worth of a semiotic analysis some of her other output is simpler and more self expressing. 

The DAD performance belongs to the first group imho.

There are many symbolic representations that have accompanied Madonna in her self discovery and her own spiritual awakening, besides what she has been sharing with her audience. Each one of the symbols of the backdrop and the lasers could tell a story, be completely connected or randomly presented (which I don’t think so) movement and choreography has also need to be taken into account and considered. 

This is my first approach if someone wants to chime in please be my guest 

[Pedro Beltran 4,649]

The symbols:

Three of life

Star of David 

Hexagram in a circle 

Heptagram in a circle 

9 light circles with eleven dancers in the form of the lower sephiroths 

She’s in the middle of all this sacred geometry forming around her with it’s own meaning a coincidence no I don’t think so…

The most surprising stuff for me is her quoting Gourdjieff, to those who hasn’t heard from him or read any of his propositions, he together with Peter Demianovich Ouspensky proposed the 4th path. Sorry if that’s not the English name as I read their work in Russian (jk 🤣) and they have a very interesting proposition on the development of the human being. 

Coincidence in DAD performance, I don’t think so again 

[BuggedOut 4,123]

31 minutes ago, Pedro Beltran said:

It’s a complicated analysis because meanwhile so much of Madonnas artistic output can be full of hidden meanings and very much worth of a semiotic analysis some of her other output is simpler and more self expressing. 

The DAD performance belongs to the first group imho.

There are many symbolic representations that have accompanied Madonna in her self discovery and her own spiritual awakening, besides what she has been sharing with her audience. Each one of the symbols of the backdrop and the lasers could tell a story, be completely connected or randomly presented (which I don’t think so) movement and choreography has also need to be taken into account and considered. 

This is my first approach if someone wants to chime in please be my guest 

[Pedro Beltran 4,649]

Those symbols also have a circle around them and around Madonna, there are many many interpretations from Judaism to Wicca to neo pegan religions, all coincide that the circle is a form of protection to what’s inside of them or what people believe what’s inside of them. 

I personally don’t have any preconceived or have a religious affiliation with any of the spiritual interpretations or organized religions. I consider myself as a free thinker rather than a believer but I found fascinating what she’s trying to convey trough her art 

[Pedro Beltran 4,649]

Does everything in the show is like this, of course not, thank god not (if he/she/they exists). We also have titties and black guys asses on display 🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼 clowns and drag queen and hung boxers on display 

There was a time when she was more symbolic but to ignore this and just say work bitch work clap clap clap is an oversimplification of her work 

[Honey Little 4,102]

55 minutes ago, McDonna said:

Madonna's first World tour in France:

 

This live music sounds so amazing. 😻 

[Donna 16,736]

[stefo 6,579]

3 hours ago, Pedro Beltran said:

Those symbols also have a circle around them and around Madonna, there are many many interpretations from Judaism to Wicca to neo pegan religions, all coincide that the circle is a form of protection to what’s inside of them or what people believe what’s inside of them. 

I personally don’t have any preconceived or have a religious affiliation with any of the spiritual interpretations or organized religions. I consider myself as a free thinker rather than a believer but I found fascinating what she’s trying to convey trough her art 

She is performing a veeery stylish and revisited  version of the Gurdjeff sacred dances, excercizes intended to support the awekening of the conscience and the enforcement of the prensence of the human being, in wich different parts of the body have to move in asynchronous way.

 

[Honey Little 4,102]

4 minutes ago, stefo said:

She is performing a veeery stylish and revisited  version of the Gurdjeff sacred damces for the awekening of the conscience and the enforcement of the prensence of the human being, in wich different parts of the body have to move in asynchronous way.

 

[Pedro Beltran 4,649]

1 minute ago, stefo said:

She is performing a veeery stylish and revisited  version of the Gurdjeff sacred damces for the awekening of the conscience and the enforcement of the prensence of the human being, in wich different parts of the body have to move in asynchronous way.

 

Yeah, thanks for this video! That’s why we also had to bring into the analysis the choreography as many movements have meaning and intention, even in classical judeo-Christian traditions as ours. 

Great find @stefo, I studied for some years a long long time ago the teachings of Gurdjieff and they were always very interesting, I was in college so I would have a different perspective if I read them again as a mature adult 

[Blue Jean 15,506]

The Queen of Pop, Rock and Soul! The last living legend!

[Blue Jean 15,506]

8 minutes ago, stefo said:

She is performing a veeery stylish and revisited  version of the Gurdjeff sacred dacces, excercizes intended to support the awekening of the conscience and the enforcement of the prensence of the human being, in wich different parts of the body have to move in asynchronous way.

 

Is this for the orgy?

[Honey Little 4,102]

Just now, Blue Jean said:

Is this for the orgy?

It’s for Díe Another Day. The orgy was Justify Mi Luv.

[Honey Little 4,102]

[Honey Little 4,102]

 

Keter!!! 

[Honey Little 4,102]