Madonna in the Sports Palace

Madonna is considered one of the last greatest pop artists of all time. The His shows are spectacular and he could fill another five dates at the Palacio de los Deportes with his tour Celebration. It is known. But it’s also known that they haven’t been playing their songs like they used to for a few years now (apparently that’s no longer relevant) and that they’ve been receiving unfair criticism lately for their blatant use of the scalpel. So what to celebrate?

The obvious. Forty year career. Very few artists can say that and no one is like them. But more than that, like other countries, Madonna came to Mexico Celebrate his reaching the summit despite all obstacles. Perhaps many would have initially stayed on the ground: arriving in the 70s in a city of New York that was not yet so open at the time, doing everything with the firm idea of ​​being a singer and, once you were one, daring to try to be a singer to become an icon of social, cultural and even ideological revolutions. Everything from pop music… But, perhaps more than that, he came to celebrate that he was still alive.

Madonna gave a show with a lot and for the LGBT community

The night in the Sports Palace was long. Although there was hours of waiting at the edge of the building, the doors opened by 7pm and after a DJ and lots of 80s music Bob, the drag queen, was responsible for introducing Madonna just after 10:30 p.m.…and when the audience was already getting so impatient that they were already starting the “wave” to entertain themselves with what was about to come out Queen of Pop.

Seee, “the wave”: a clear sign that there were people in the palace in the stands who grew up with the singeralthough there were also many who were born when Madonna was already an international star (her first international tour was in 1985) or when she was already the cultural reference that she is today (say, when she kissed Britney Spears “sponsorte”) on the mouth) and Cristina Aguilera… and that was more than 20 years ago).

¿The most remarkable thing about seeing Madonna on stage? How beautiful it looks. What is hardly noticeable are the pronounced traces of interventions that attempted to stop the passage of time on her face, which made her unrecognizable and the target of ridicule.

Could it be said that you have decided to accept the moment you are in? Perhaps. Well, he even comes on stage wearing an orthopedic knee brace, accepting (or perhaps out of medical obligation) that he’s no longer fit for certain jogs. She no longer dances as she has on other occasions (and probably won’t again) and shows full physicality to her various dancers who accompany her.

“Frida Kahlo was my muse, my spiritual animal. Inspire me”

And I highlight the passage of time not for any other reason, but because it’s what the show the singer is presenting is about. Even after opening with the Valemadrist “Nothing Really Matters” and wowing his fans with “Into the Groove,” She was ahead of time when she dealt with her “self” 40 years ago… He also addressed those who had failed to survive the wave of HIV-related deaths in the 1980s (this while singing “Live to Tell,” with special mention of Freddy Mercury).

Time is death and she sees it that way with her contemporaries: screams when Sinead O’Connor appeared on the giant screens and when she dances with Michael Jackson to the rhythm of “Billie Jean” mixed with “Like a Virgin.”. One of the most emotional parts of the show, but also the one in which the loneliness in which Madonna remains as one of the last figures of pop is most clearly expressed: her dance with a shadow.

Madonna looks back on 40 years of her career with spectacular performances

Musically, it’s Madonna who makes the most of a catalog compiled over four decades (and also leaves out many of the best). According to the setlist there were 26 songs (mixed with many others), in about two and a half hours… a dizzying presentation which, to the annoyance of some (if you can be mad at a Madonna show), featured short versions of songs that many would have liked in an expanded form.: “Holiday”, “Hung Up”, “La Isla Bonita”, “Don’t Tell Me”, etc.

It goes without saying that it was a concert with a spectacular production. It’s Madonna and it should come as no surprise that the stage and the hallway that stretches between the audience are short for anything that happens during the show. Fire, dances, boxing matches, nightclub bouncers… a fashion runway (judged by her and Guillermo Rodríguez, Jimmy Kimmel’s troupe), her flight between laser games and singing “Ray of Light”… This shouldn’t be the case, but it does: it surprises and leaves us unsure where to look, to the point that the protagonist is lost, at least at the “court” level.

Madonna celebrated more than a career, a life

Maybe it’s intentional. Madonna intervened in a whole work, she inserted herself and created more than a concerto, a long performance in which she steps aside (if that’s possible in the eyes of the thousands of fans who adore them), letting the audience enjoy and paralyze (little room for dancing when you’re so impressed by what you see), what they’ve built over the last 40 years has, his art.

At the end it was emphasized that the work remains and she will continue with her life (probably making music): Madonna danced with all the “I” that she embodied throughout her career. As they say, this is what happens when you’re one step away from death: you watch life pass by in a split second.

It’s not like she’s going to die soon (well, she was a few months ago when she got into the ICU), but Symbolically, between music and dancing, she simply covered her face and disappeared. As if to say, “I left what I did there.”…what she celebrated is simply life (and perhaps we should all do the same).