Press Release
Diva Dynamo , 1998
In the Duelling Diva

Janet Jackson, Diva Dynamo
In the Duelling Diva Smackdown that has filled MCI Center for five of the past nine nights, Janet Jackson KO’d Madonna with a two-hour show that favoured jubilant entertainment over sombre art, and embraced the past instead of avoiding it.  Jackson, who opened a three-night stand at MCI on Thursday, also trumped Madonna in terms of staging, choreography and audience participation.  Last weekend’s Madonna shows seemed downright cold compared with Jackson’s concerts, the last of which is to take place tonight.

Oddly enough, Jackson started her show the way Madonna ended hers, with a photo montage recapping ever shifting images from a 15-year career.  That gave way to the real thing, atop a towering pedestal just big enough” to support her.  Jackson, sporting a cream-coloured rhinestone outfit with  low-riding fringe pants and a beaded halter top, descended to the spacious, white-tiled stage with eight dancers floating down behind her, and launched into the buoyant “Come On Get Up,” equal parts invitation and exhortation.  The song’s sinewy dance-funk energy set the tone for the night and was immediately followed by the similarly aerobic “You Ain’t Right” and Jackson’s most recent hit, the smooth, sleek “All for You”.

After that, the show became a series of evolving tableaux built around costume changes, set designs and focussed tempos, with little drop-off in energy even for the ballads.  The most colorful segment (expanded from 1998's “Velvet Rope” tour) involved an “Alice in Wonderland”/FAO Schwartz-style playhouse set filled with whimsical toys and fantastic fairies and insects, all whirling around Jackson in her harem ensemble as she addressed the galloping funk of “Miss You Much,” “When I Think of You” and “Escapade”.

At times the songs got a little lost in the production, their melodies overwhelmed by the rivetting staging.  One example: “Trust A Try,” where rococo vocals gave way to a funk-metal melody while Jackson’s dancers seemed to mimic “Nosferatu as it might be done by a Kabuki troupe.  And who even noticed there was a song in the middle of “Would You Mind,” for which instant dominatrix Jackson, sporting a black PVC cat suit, plucked one very lucky - and very eager - young man from the front row and strapped him to a gurney, Hannibal Lecter-style.  She then proceeded to tease and torture her victim with writhing proximity.

Did he mind?

Hardly.  (One suspects there were some very interesting conversations between parents and their children on the ride home.)


Jackson, otherwise a dancing dynamo, caught a well-deserved break in a ballad segment that segued from the lush vocals of “Come Back to Me” to the charming ode to sexual responsibility “Let’s Wait a While,” to “Again,” one of several tunes where she let the audience carry the chorus.  Much of the show centered on romantin hopes and travails, with jackson’s marital woers giving particular spark to the edgy, accusatory “Son of a Gun” (which interpolates Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain,” with new lyrics from the author, who guested via video) and the melancholy “Got ‘Til It’s Gone” (which borrows its chorus hook from Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”).

Still, the show’s dominant energy was dance-floor rooted from the taut Minneapolis-bred pulsations of the “What Have You Done for Me Lately?/Control/Nasty” triptych to the martial propulsion of “If,” “Black cat” and the anthemic “Rhythm Nation.”  On the other hand, the best moments were those where Jackson engaged the audience personally with the supple “That’s the Way Love Goes,” the shimmering “Alright” and her empathically upbeat encores, “Doesn’t Really Matter,” “Someone to Call My Lover” and “Together Again.”

At times Jackson milked ecstatic audience response a tad too long, and some of her nation’s rhythms got a little repetitious.  And her voice will always feel a little thin and weak in the context of those muscled rhythms.

Speaking of muscles, Jackson looked fabulous, particularly her chiselled abs.  Of course, she’s hardly ever standing still over the course of her two hour show, leading but always very much part of the precision-tooled dance routines.  This has always been one of Jackson’s charms: her,  willingness to work ensemble-style, to participate as an equal.  She also went out of her way to credit the crucial choreographers in her troupe - Shawnette Heard, Gil Duldulao and Kelly Kono.

Where Madonna, in her concerts, offered only four songs from before 1998, Jackson proved particularly generous revisiting her past, performing 14 of 16 songs from her 1995 greatest-hits collection, and a half-dozen others that have charted since(she served up 26 in all).  And while Jackson had clearly worked up a major sweat by the end of her opening number, her spirits never seemed to flag.  Even at show’s end, her smile contained enough wattage to power Washington through its next blackout.


Washington Post © Richard Harrington 2001 (Washington Post staff writer)