My Rebel Heart Revisited: Gluttony for One's Eyes (In a Very Good Way!)

In April, I wrote on this blog the kind of show I would've loved to see Madonna perform for her Rebel Heart Tour. It was an extensive playlist but I was living in the fantasy of a three-hour show. Although many of my predictions and hopefuls were wrong (go figure, eh!), I was still amazed and awed when I watched her move and sing across her large cross-with-heart stage that jetted out into the crowd further than any stage she used in past concerts. This alone brought a huge change to Madonna's concert - it felt more intimate even though it was a huge stage in a huge stadium.

As usual, she had a show broken into four sets with interconnecting themes. She's described the themes, others have dissected them, but for me there was one theme consistent with the entire show - it was Madonna. She was a rebel with a heart laughing wholeheartedly near the end of "Bitch I'm Madonna," dancing alone, light-heartedly, and having fun moving across the entire stage during "Like a Virgin," and showing off her dancers' abs to both her fans and her own delight just before she sang "True Blue" using a ukulele. It was a showcase of what she did, what she persevered through, and what she can still do. That's our rebel heart, Madonna.
Although it wouldn't have been my first prediction, the opener, "Iconic," was an exercise of gluttony for the eyes. There was so much awesomeness going on that I didn't know where to look. It fit really well as an opener to the theme of being Madonna: I can, Icon.

A Madonna concert wouldn't be a Madonna concert without some epic moments: from the moment she came down in a cage to the moment she flew away from us at the end, there were some jaw-dropping scenes. One in particular included dancers defying gravity and bending back-and-forth on tall, thin poles during "Illuminati." Another was her homage to the "Material Girl" video as she threw men off a tilted stage, one by one, just like she did on the stage in the video. Her outfit alone was a marvel in itself. Were they real diamonds swaying across her body?!? Wow! But the best part of the show: it lacked politics. Although she continues to straddle the 'blasphemous' line between religion and sex, which included an erotically charged interpretation of the last supper, there were no speeches or videos that pulled away from the light, fun, happy vibe of the show. She was having fun on the stage and we were having fun with her. It took her over thirty years to get to this point in her career and I'm so glad I made it with her because this is the best I've seen Madonna and I hope to see more of this rebel heart in the future.