HD: Madonna “I Don’t Give A” MDNA Tour (feat. Nicki’s backdrop)
Beyoncé: Coming Back and Catching Up, Then Conquering [The New York Times Review]
By BEN RATLIFF | Published: May 26, 2012
ATLANTIC CITY — Beyoncé gave birth to her daughter, Blue Ivy Carter, on Jan. 7, and is now between albums and tours. From a distance, her four-night run of shows through Monday at Revel, on the Boardwalk here, seemed to be functioning as an advertisement for the grand opening of a $2.4 billion casino, hotel, and luxury-shopping cosmos. It was a little unclear what she was going to do for her first post-maternal gig.
She didn’t hit the stage until 10 p.m. on Friday, after the unannounced opening act, Luke James, a young R&B singer with a gym build and a pretty falsetto. The signals from an official video made in the rehearsal period before her gigs had been mixed. In it, her chorcoseographer Frank Gatson Jr. tells the camera: “I think this show has the potential of being probably one of the greatest shows we’ve done.” Beyoncé herself seems more realistic. “I don’t want to have to disappear from the stage too many times,” she tells her crew during a meeting. So: a reduced, low-concept show, to break slowly into shape again?
No. She’s moving at the same speed as before. The show lasted two hours and allowed a dip in the middle for ballads, but otherwise ran rampant, functioning as an almost continuous high point: “Freakum Dress”; “Run the World (Girls)”; “Resentment”; “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)”; “Halo”; “Countdown”; and “1+1,” which she sang on top of a piano, sitting on her knees.
It is an old and rarely used gesture of our district, occasionally seen at funerals. It means thanks, it means admiration, it means good-bye to someone you love.
