It’s when Beyoncé shows she can fly, too, that my doubts momentarily crack. She has the help of an elegant trapeze on a zip-wire, it’s true, but as she zooms through the air in a glittering body-suit above tens of thousands of gawping fans, landing amongst them in mere seconds, it’s hard not to cheer.
The royal purple of that outfit suits Beyoncé Knowles. She is an imperial star these days, the reigning queen of pop.
Before she even appeared in Birmingham in the first week of her latest world tour, a video prelude showed her as a powdered Marie Antoinette. The statuesque hauteur with which she soon tosses a carefully sweat-stained towel into the crowd, unsmiling and barely flexing an arm let’s you know who’s in charge. When she stomps her foot to signal the start of “End of Time”, a Godzilla clang then rings through the arena. From her regularly tossed, leonine mane to her thickly muscled athlete’s legs, she has honed her body into a force of nature to match her cybernetic version of R&B’s relentless, cold momentum. Read the rest of this entry »
