I liked the last five lines from this review.
Spears goes over the top at Tulsa showBy JENNIFER CHANCELLOR World Scene Writer
Published: 9/16/2009 2:21 AM
Last Modified: 9/16/2009 5:46 AM
Britney Spears' "Big Apple Circus" started with Coney Island flair and freak-show charm.
A legless woman and a bald man traded tricks on a trampoline. A midget ringleader shouted encouragement from the sideline. Martial artists kicked and flipped in unison.
A near-capacity audience hooted with disbelief as a gymnast flipped and jumped on an inches-wide balance beam.
Then things got more surreal.
Nearly 10 minutes into Spears' Tuesday night show at Tulsa's BOK Center, the main attraction herself descended from the ceiling into the center of a gyrating circus.
Spears was nearly lost in the mix
Her dancing, caged-animal routine was sexy, but the masked men who danced around her wheeled golden cage during "Piece of Me" stole the show.
By stomping her heels and strutting across the stage in glittered bombast, she stole it right back.
The evening's show was an over-the-top big-top performance in every way. It had to be.
Spears is larger than life. Everything about her is gilded and glitzy, over-hyped and hyperspeed.
Her "Circus" tour show showcases those traits.
The three-ring spectacle was filled with live choreography — Spears as its sultry ringleader, if not its full-time singer.
The five-act legion of illusion and bewitchment wasn't the only sleight-of-hand Tuesday night.
Much of her set was lip-synched — and Spears was too busy dancing and contorting to be bothered with concealing it.
The lack of "live" singing at a concert is controversial for many, but not for this crowd. The fans came to be entertained.
A magician appeared to cut the star into pieces and then made her lingerie-clad form disappear while she lip-synched and shimmied to "Ooh Ooh Baby" and "Hot as Ice."
And then there was another costume change and another hippodrome-ready vision of pomp and grandeur.
Half a dozen gold-plated low-rider bicycles rolled in. Dancers enveloped Spears, and then — a solo.
She covered Alanis Morissette's "You Oughta Know" sans fanfare, nearly alone on stage and dressed in rocker black spandex pants and bikini top. She traipsed out from the circus and into a house of fun.
Quite possibly the largest crowd response came with her live version of "Everytime" as she sat perched in a shimmering bird seat.
Following that song, she skipped, catlike, into another costume change and into the songs "Freakshow" and "Get Naked."
Masked men gave way to more than a dozen dancers on golden couches. "Breathe on Me" and "Touch of My Hand" followed in an electrified freakshow-peepshow segment.
That morphed into metallic props and welding sparks as a leather-wearing troupe launched into a tattoo and boom-beat segment with "Do Something," "Toxic" and a street-tough, amped dance version of "Baby One More Time."
The live band was lost in the pits for most of the show but gained momentum toward the end of the concert.
The organic sound of beating drums and wailing guitars added a sense of humanity — even if it was surreally Technicolored.
But, all that said, even with the sex, the innuendo, the crassness, the bombast and the million-dollar production, there's still a subtle naïveté about Spears and her stage presence.
It peeks from beneath her curtain of hair extensions and her torrid lash-batting, but it's there.
She didn't command her audience — but that seemed OK because everyone was already along for the ride.
In many ways, Spears is still the childlike Disney Mouseketeer. She's choreographed; she's beautiful; and her timing's perfect.
Maybe that's why, weirdly, it all worked. *************************************************************************************************************
Concert review: Britney Spears proves capable ringmaster of "Circus" at BOK Center By George Lang
Published: September 16, 2009
Not long ago, in those dark days of 2007, it was conventional wisdom that Britney Spears might have problems getting through a Rorschach test, never mind a full-scale, Las Vegas-style concert extravaganza.
And yet, there was Spears Tuesday night at Tulsa's BOK Center, performing as if all that tabloid mess had been scrubbed from the collective memory. No, she had not been magically transformed into a stunning singer, but Spears made her initial reputation as a performer, and at the BOK Center, she was performing.
Following abbreviated sets by Kristinia DeBarge and former "American Idol" champion Jordin Sparks, the Barnum & Britney lights went up, and the Big Apple Circus took to the three rings on the floor of the arena, bouncing on trampolines and spinning chrome-plated giant cubes. After all, this was "The Circus, Starring Britney Spears," so the concert began with a surplus of human feats of strength and agility before Spears, 27, descended from the rafters in an egg-shaped cage.
This was a tightly choreographed "Circus," and not just in terms of dance: the concert moved quickly and with metronomic precision. Spears danced and worked as a magician's assistant during performances of "Circus" and "Piece of Me," and acrobats spiraled from the ceiling on long silk scarves as a prelude to "Radar." Then Spears moved away from the big tent theme and into a martial arts concept piece for "Ooh Ooh Baby" and "Hot As Ice" and an elaborate bicycle routine for "Boys."
Then, just as she did during a Sept. 5 performance in Greensboro, N.C., Spears temporarily shut down all the flash and spectacle and performed a cover of Alanis Morissette's "You Oughta Know." More so than at any other time during the two-hour concert, Spears appeared to be actually singing, and her faithful rendition of "You Oughta Know" provided a refreshing realism to the set.
Having largely surprised the Tulsa crowd with the Morissette song, Spears returned to massive dance sequences with a Bollywood-inspired performance of "Me Against the Music." And after emphasizing her more sexualized material such as "Freakshow," "Breathe On Me" and "Get Naked," she closed out her main set with two of her best-known hits, "Toxic" and "Baby One More Time."
There would be no massive encore: Spears performed "Womanizer" before she and her dancers bowed and exited to the strains of "Circus." Call it an expectations game or grading on a curve, but for a good portion of this decade, Spears did little to inspire confidence that she could put on such a show. At this point, she is far from embarrassing herself or going through the motions as she did during that memorably shambling performance on the MTV Video Music Awards just two years ago. She looked good, was energetic and proved fully capable of being the ringmaster for this "Circus." And for the approximately 16,000 fans gathered in downtown Tulsa, that was more than enough.
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Britney Spears brings ‘The Circus’ to OrlandoChris Bradshaw, Community contributor
Cute little Britney Spears is a woman now. That’s the reality to digest when you see her during her current tour entitled “The Circus” in support of her latest album, “Circus.” Her performance is kind of a freaky bump-and-grind circus and fetish fashion show set to music conducted by a saucy ringmaster. No foul language but plenty of risque content.
Pop acts Kristinia DeBarge and One Call got the evening going at the Amway Arena in Orlando on Sept. 1, each with a brisk six-minute set. Next up was American Idol’s season six winner, Jordin Sparks, who had a little more stage time.
After a brief intermission, the circus theme kicked in. Members of the “Big Apple Circus” dazzled the crowd with twenty minutes of “Wow!”-inducing acrobatic fun. Their talent alone was worth a hunk of the ticket price.At around 9:20 p.m., a huge ring-shaped screen high above the crowd projected introductory circus footage. When all went dark, spotlights followed Spears lowering down from the Amway Arena rafters in a spherical contraption while wearing knee-high black boots and a hooded black trench coat. When she landed, two dancers peeled off her coat, revealing a gold super hero-type outfit, studded with gemstones and spikes. Spears immediately turned up the heat.
The show began and never stopped for a moment. There was fire, smoke, confetti, magic, aerial artists, a dozen dancers, numerous costume changes and even an inspiring legless female acrobat. It was definitely more of a “show” than a concert.
The amazing stage was three rings, of course; a larger center stage and ramps leading to smaller side stages, consuming most of the arena floor. Each of the stage surfaces had several trap doors and hydraulic portions that rose Spears and the other performers above and below the stage. The band was practically unnoticeable, tucked in a corner off the main stage on the floor.
Spears is a huge star so a mega-production was no shocker. Nor were the ticket prices, ranging from $39.50 to a VIP package for just less than $500.00, which included a “Ringside” seat, backstage tour and numerous other perks. No matter what was paid for admission, there was bang for the buck.
Spears’ fans had a blast and dressed for the occasion. There were short-shorts and revealing snug tops. And that was just the guys.
While Spears didn’t mingle much with the crowd, she did cover nearly every square inch of the massive stage surface, getting as close as possible to everyone.
The circus-themed concert idea is not original. But when it’s done this well, it really doesn’t matter.