Britney Spears
Shortly after the New York radio station Z100 premiered her new song, "Womanizer", Spears made a surprise appearance on the show and announced she would be going on a worldwide tour in spring of 2009 to support the album. The tour was officially announced on December 2, 2008 to coincide with the album's release. Wade Robson and his wife Amanda were going to direct and write the tour, but decided not to in order to focus on one of their own projects.[4]. Rehearsals for the tour began in January 2009, in preparation for a March kick off.[5] So far, the tour has sold over 1,000,000 tickets and all the London dates on the European leg have sold out.[6][7][8][9] As the tour approached commencement, it was revealed that gossip blogger, Perez Hilton, appears in a video to be shown during the opening of the show.[10]
Tour promoter AEG Live's president John Meglen spoke with Robin Leach of the Las Vegas Sun about the tour, "It is one of the biggest and best-selling tours of the decade. Response and reaction has been phenomenal worldwide, and this weekend date at MGM is the highest ticket-selling gross so far. European fans cannot wait for her to get there, and in many, many venues, the tickets have been sold out instantly, and we’ve had to juggle dates to add more shows to meet the demand." [11]
On April 27, 2009, Las Vegas Deluxe reported that "the stage alone costs $10 million to build as an intricate jigsaw puzzle, and it costs $6 million a week just to keep the tour running with its road staff of 220 -- plus the cast of circus performers! The stage gear, including sex swings, love couches, unicycles, stripper poles, a gold cage and giant picture frames, travels in some 3,000 rolling cases packed into 32 semis -- plus wardrobe for Britney and the onstage performers."
Additionally, magician, Ed Alonzo joins Spears on stage during a magic act. He commented about working with Spears, “She does all the classic elements of magic. Britney loves magic and really enjoys doing it. She dances so hard in the show, she gets a little break when I saw her in half or transport her from one place to end up in another. She looks incredibly toned and in fantastic shape. She has to dance really hard with all the dance crew kind of moves with hip-hop and tumbling. She works her tail off.” There is a staff of 150 people to set up the stages and it's usually takes as long as 12 hours to build the entire set. There are also six full-time wardrobe women to keep the 350 costumes in order. The entire wardrobe includes around $150,000 of Swaroski crystals. On April 29, 2009, her official website announced that the travelling staff is over 200 people, 50 of them being dancers, magicians, clowns and acrobats. 34 trucks are used to transport the 60 tons of equipment. In addition, the budget of the tour was revealed to be of $US 50 million.
The show begins with a video introduction featuring Perez Hilton parodying Queen Elizabeth I. Spears appears in the video from behind a curtain and shoots him with a crossbow. As the video ends, the curtains goes up and she descends on a suspended platform, dressed in ringleader attire, to perform "Circus". At the conclusion of the song, she enters a golden cage, where she performs "Piece of Me", dancing and pretending to escape from her dancers. A brief interlude follows, featuring a performance by acrobats simulating a thunderstorm, before Spears goes into "Radar" which features her pole dancing. Spears performing "Boys" during the second act of the show. A video interlude follows, showcasing a martial arts inspired dance to the LAZRtag remix of "Gimme More". Spears returns to the stage playing a magician's assistant and performs "Ooh Ooh Baby" dressed in a glittery dress, as she is sawed in half and escapes from a box, only to reappear on the other end of the stage, performing "Hot as Ice" in a different outfit. Dressed in military clothes, she performs "Boys", riding on the back of a motorcycle, before moving into "If U Seek Amy". Spears continues the act with a Bollywood-inspired remix of "Me Against the Music". Spears is then lifted into the air on a giant umbrella to perform "Everytime".
Near the conclusion of the show, there is a band interlude, and Spears returns on stage to perform "Do Somethin'" and a remix of "I'm a Slave 4 U", in which she's raised on a platform as a ring of fire starts below her. After "Heartbeat", a dancers interlude, Spears appears on the stage to perform "Toxic" and a remix of "…Baby One More Time".
The encore begins with the "Break the Ice" video interlude, which includes various clips of Spears' past music videos. Spears returns for a performance of "Womanizer" dressed as a policewoman. At the end of the song, Spears and her dancers gather on the center stage as a wall of fireworks (similar to her "Circus" video) surrounds them. Spears and her dancers then bow to each side of the arena, before they head to the left side stage. They then dance quickly around the small side stage before leaving the arena.
Tour Ranking:
On April 9, 2009 The Circus Starring: Britney Spears took the number one slot at the top twenty tour list with an average box office growth per city of $2,384,567 and an average ticket price of $102.51.
