DJ Mary Mac opened for Madonna’s Rebel Heart Tour’s first night in Manila. The DJ worked hard to prep the crowd for the Queen’s main show, but the audience just couldn’t “Get into the Groove,” it seemed.
Madonna got a tepid response for her first Manila concert and it’s a shame — the Queen pulled out all the stops for a spectacular show which might be one of her last tours (if not the last) that reveals the full breadth of her artistry and showmanship.
The artist herself urged the audience to party with her in a short spiel in between songs, “This is my first time in Manila, motherfuckers…so give it up!” She wasn’t here to “just sing five songs,” she said, “I came here to shut the city.” But the city’s been shut down already, long before she came on stage after a two-hour wait.
The audience stood on its feet, clapped, screamed and whistled as the curtains rose with fabulously costumed warriors marching to the strong beats of the concert’s first song, “Iconic,” a cut from Madonna’s Rebel Heart album. The singer descended on the stage in a cage to the energized crowd’s noisy welcome. But that euphoric reception died down as fast as it started, with most of the people in the audience retiring to their seats for the rest of the song.
This was followed by “Bitch I’m Madonna” — a declaration from the Queen of Pop that she’s still here, she’s still got the chops and she’s not lost her rebel heart, as expressed in a line from the song, “We go hard or we go home, Bitch I’m Madonna.”
The familiar hits would get the audience dancing and singing along. Such as when Madonna took an electric guitar from a stagehand to perform a pumped-up rendition of the dance anthem “Burning Up,” this time invigorated with heavier, crunchier riffs care of the artist herself. She played a ukulele while singing the ’80s hit “True Blue,” with the audience obliging the artist by turning on their phone flashlights, and a guitar for an acoustic version of “Who’s That Girl.”
Madonna’s provocative pokes at religion were some of the most mesmerizing segments of the concert.
Stylized crosses rose from the stage floor as a congregation of nuns who seemed to have left the lower parts of their habits behind at the convent strutted around before performing some seriously erotic and bawdy pole-dancing to the tune of “Holy Water,” with Madonna herself showing off some pole flourish towards the end of the song.
While everyone ogled the “nuns” in black-and-white veils, lacy panties and satin black bras, an elaborate staging of the Last Supper was assembled at center stage, the setting for “Devil’s Prayer.”
It is often overlooked, but Madonna shines generous light on the discipline of dance. The Rebel Heart Tour’s dance sequels were enthralling and showed imaginative choreography and the remarkable athleticism, grace and confident swagger of the singer’s dancers.
A portion that featured a long strip of white cloth blown about by several electric fans while a soloist strutted, moon-walked, tutted and twirled around on his back presented a softer and more fluid expression of street style. Inclined flooring was the stage for several jaw-dropping dance moves, including one segment that had dancers in poetic foreplay while in bed.
The Queen revealed a bit of herself during the show. She seemed a bit disappointed as she muttered something like “so you really just want me to sweat this,” before disappearing for another costume change.
She’s funny, too. She asked the audience if they forgot to charge their batteries because in other countries, “they turned on their flashlights when I played that song. Just saying,” she jested.
Most of all, the show revealed the artist’s generosity in giving her fans everything that she’s got. It was almost one o’clock in the morning when the giant screen flashed a hand-scrawled note, “Bye Bitches!!!”
Madonna returned for an encore to sing “Holiday” with a Philippine flag draped around her. There were feeble clamors for one last song as the artist disappeared behind the stage and the arena was cleared of fans in a blink right after.
Some from that night’s audience may have gone home disappointed, expecting more of the hits from their youth. The songs from the new album display the singer’s more current sound with its lush (chaotic, for some critics) layers of varied influences and forays into different instrumentation. Rebel Heart wasn’t designed to be a nostalgia trip. It was about Madonna’s own journey with the artist taking her fans through her music, then and now.
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