Madonna still provocative but wistful on new epic tour

Madonna performs at Madison Square Garden in New York City on Sept 16, 2015. PHOTO: AFP

NEW YORK (AFP) -• Two hours into a show in which transgender nuns twirled on stripper poles and hot-bodied dancers simulated most imaginable sex acts, Madonna's eyes glistened.

"I'm so lucky to have survived this long," the pop legend told a sold-out crowd on Wednesday at Madison Square Garden. "I'm feeling pretty nostalgic tonight. I first performed here 30 years ago."

On one of the first dates of her new Rebel Heart tour, she still proved her capacity to provoke and, at 57, powered lustrously through an elaborately choreographed set whose breakneck pace would daunt an artist of any age.

The show opened with her descending from a cage to a procession of armoured dancers inspired by Joan of Arc and the samurai.

Changing attire at a dizzying pace, she assumed personas that ranged from a 1920s cabaret coquette to an erotically charged matador.

But she also turned wistful before the audience in her adopted hometown, remembering her first time in Madison Square Garden, when she closed her blockbuster tour for Like A Virgin in 1985.

The show of emotion was rare for Madonna, who is known for her fierce professional determination and has responded defiantly after recent setbacks including online leaks of the Rebel Heartalbum.

Madonna helped revolutionise the concept of a concert with her 1990 Blond Ambition tour, giving a new aura to her music through prolific costume changes and heavy overtones of sex including simulated masturbation, which even brought condemnation by The Vatican.

She has not toned down the sex on the Rebel Heart tour. She even emerged to a recording of her voice declaring, "I have t**s and a**and an insatiable desire to be noticed." With Holy Water, dancers dressed as nuns with a transgender appearance glided up and down poles and hoisted herperilously in the air.

The stage then turned into a mock Last Supper, with Madonna as the main course tied on the table with her legs flirtatiously open.

She was ready to strip down the music as well. In one of the most emotionally resonant moments of the night, she sat alone with a ukulele and sang, in French, Edith Piaf's La Vie En Rose.

The twice-divorced singer described herself as "cynical" about marriage, stating: "I have good reason to be, but I still am a romantic at heart."

Madonna, whose New York fan base is heavily Latino and gay, similarly transformed several of her giddiest 1980s tracks - Dress You Up, Into The Groove and Lucky Star - into an acoustic, Spanish-tinged medley brought joyously to stage as a flamenco dance.

"This is the first time my manager told me that I'm wearing too much clothing," she said as she donned a Latin floral dress.

She opened the tour last week in Montreal and has planned a total of 76 shows through March 27, when Rebel Heart closes in Brisbane, Australia.

It is her first tour since her 88-date global sweep in 2012 for her album MDNA, concerts that triggered controversy for her outspoken commentary on issues including gun culture in the United States and Europe's far-right.

Rebel Heart is, by contrast, mostly free of politics, save during Illuminati, her toying take on conspiracy theories, in which a screen flashed sudden scenes ranging from a Ku Klux Klan rally to a gay rights kiss-in.

In recent years, she has accused her critics of ageism and, when she signed off, she was back to her steely self.

There was no dramatic bow or prolonged encore, with her simple parting words: "Thank you, New York. We'll be back."

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