It's time to get "Bootylicious."
R 'n' B star Beyonce Knowles comes to Taipei's Zhongshan Football Stadium (中山足球場) on Monday for a two-hour show that is sure to be a spectacle.
The 26-year-old Texan, known for her skimpy on-stage outfits and explosive voice, explosive lyrics and explosive dance moves, is visiting Taiwan as part of her Beyonce Experience 2007 World Tour.
Photo: AFP
Reviewers have been raving about the show, which opened April 10 at the 55,000-seat Tokyo Dome and included stops in Europe and 41 North American cities.
"From the diva-style opening, when she rises from beneath the stage amidst a blinding sparkler display, to the final audience sing-along on the female-empowering hit Irreplaceable, the star delivers a crowd-pleasing spectacle that offers as much visual as musical stimulation," wrote a reviewer in the Hollywood Reporter.
Apparently the word hasn't spread to Taiwan yet. As of press time, tickets for all sections of the stadium were 30 percent off.
Though only in her mid-twenties, Beyonce has been big for a decade, first as a member of the girl group Destiny's Child, then as a solo singer and, recently, as an actress in such films as Dreamgirls and The Pink Panther. She's recorded eight singles that reached number one on the US charts and an additional eight that cracked the Top 10, sold 140 million albums, and won 10 Grammys.
For last Tuesday's concert in Shanghai, Beyonce wore 10 different glittering silver costumes and sang more than 30 songs, including Crazy in Love and Baby Boy, according to published reports.
Previous dates included Jakarta, which she added after canceling her Malaysia concert to protest that country's ultra-conservative dress code.
The cancellation came in the wake of rumors that Beyonce, who is well-known for her sultry image and revealing outfits, disapproved of the Malaysian government's policy that women performers wear clothes covering their chests and shoulders down to their knees.
Earlier this year, former No Doubt frontwoman, Gwen Stefani, made what she called "a major sacrifice" by wearing clothes that showed little skin at a Kuala Lumpur performance after Muslim activists called for the concert's cancellation.
Beyonce chose instead to perform in Jakarta, capital of the world's most populous Muslim country. Indonesia did not require her to follow a strict dress code.
One of the highlights of this year's Beyonce tour was a concert last month that was part of Ethiopia's 2,000th birthday celebrations. In September, Los Angeles-based hip-hop group the Black Eyed Peas kicked off a year of birthday concerts in the country, but received a lukewarm reception from their Ethiopian audience. So did Beyonce's opening act, the rapper Ludacris. But Beyonce got a hysterical welcome from the crowd and told them, "You have been one of the best audiences of my lifetime."
The Beyonce Experience 2007 World Tour also includes dates in Russia, Romania, Turkey, India, Thailand and Macau.
This singer's Taipei concert is being organized by Liquid Lifestyle Promotions (www.liquid-lifestyle.com).
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