Madonna is missing an opportunity
The show: Madonna: Rebel Heart Tour The moment: The acrobats Midway through this 2016 concert film, Madonna disappears to change her costume and, I imagine, rub Tiger Balm on her aching joints while chugging Gatorade. Meanwhile, her dancers shimmy up whiplike poles with T-bars at the top, where they stand, swaying.
Her recorded voice begins singing “Illuminati” (“Everybody in this party’s shining like Illuminati”). The dancers push their poles, making circles in the air.
Swinging ever faster, the poles are soon bending in dizzying parabolic arcs.
As the song builds, the dancers whiz back and forth, swiping top hats off dancers below, narrowly missing each other and the ground.
Oh, Madonna. On the one hand, your live performances may be your best legacy. This concert is thrilling spectacle, each song a discreet experience, a miniature emotional arc.
Your visuals are so textured and varied, they almost — almost! — disguise the banality of your lyrics (“You know that everything that glitters ain’t gold/So let the music take you out of control/It’s time to feel it in your body and zzzzzzz”).
On the other hand, your hankypanky is getting creaky. You still think the f-bomb is super-naughty. Like your pole dancers, you’re teetering dangerously — but toward a novelty burlesque act, 60-something granny flashing her pasties at her ever-younger troupe.
I wish that instead of clinging to old notions of “hotness,” you had showed us a new way forward, embracing that 55 is not 35 and shouldn’t be.
Your light show is cutting edge. But your attitude — “Look how young I still appear!” — is the opposite of evolved. Madonna: Rebel Heart Tour is airing on TMN at various times between Saturday and May 31. Johanna Schneller is a media connoisseur who zeroes in on pop-culture moments. She usually appears Monday through Thursday.