The closest thing to a gay march in Toronto this weekend was easily Kylie Minogue‘s first-ever Canadian concert at the Air Canada Centre. The moment the pint-sized Aussie pop star descended from the ceiling atop a giant, glittering skull wearing a geometric John Paul Gaultier dress and Technicolor boa singing “Light Years”, the place practically went up in flames.
At 41, Kylie is a massive star in the UK and Australia, but her nice-girl image and disco pop have earned her little more than cult status in North America. If she commands a broader audience elsewhere in the world, it certainly was not apparent at this show. The many couture costume changes and purple-laser light displays seemed squarely targeted at her adoring, male admirers.
Read more and check out photos after the jump!
From the cosmic opening number, we entered a world populated by robotic back-up dancers in Daft Punk-style helmets. As the audience sang along to hits “Speakerphone,” “Come Into My World” and “It’s In Your Eyes”, the dancers, clad in skin-tight body suits, shadowed her every movement.
The robots soon dispersed and we were transported back in time to 1991. Cross-color motion graphics on moving LED screens assaulted our eyes and old school piano house pop song “Shocked” serenaded our ears. From there, we entered the bathhouse to the sounds of “Red-Blooded Woman”, where beefcake dancers showered, wrapped themselves in towels and then ripped off their underwear revealing… a second pair underneath.
Audio of Judy Garland from The Wizard of Oz heralded an art deco ballad routine that saw Kylie lounging on a chaise next to two life-size panther-statutes. As she crooned “White Diamond” and “Confide in Me”, a silhouette of Toronto’s skyline and its phallic CN Tower lit up the stage.
And if all that wasn’t gay enough, she even covered “Vogue”.
Kylie Minogue wraps up her first-ever North American tour with two shows at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York tonight and tomorrow.
(Thanks to James for the photos!)
Do you have a setlist for the TO concert?