Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Ball is her third concert tour in support of her second studio album Born This Way (2011). The tour will consist of 110 shows in Asia, New Zealand, Australia, and later Europe in August 2012, followed by Latin America towards the end of the year, and then North America beginning in January 2013.
The Born This Way Ball is divided into five acts, and is imbued with political and social themes such as discrimination and government control. The show began with “Highway Unicorn (Road to Love)”, which Gaga performed while atop of a mechanical horse out of the “electric chapel”—the three-story medieval castle prop. Metaphorically, the scene alluded to the assertion that “everyone is entitled to love, no matter what their sexual orientation”. Following the conclusion of “Government Hooker”, Gaga’s dancers reenacted the birth scene akin to that in “Born This Way”. Coinciding with the routine, Gaga moans and simulates giving birth. The singer then performs the song after coming out of the zipper-like vagina of a large, inflatable body. After “Black Jesus † Amen Fashion”, Gaga sings “Bloody Mary” in a hovering Aliens-esque costume featuring a masked that obscured her face. The Mother G.O.A.T. Manifesto I, an interlude accentuating Gaga’s alter ego Mother G.O.A.T, soon commences and recites the opening dialogue of the music video of “Born This Way”. For “Bad Romance”, Gaga performed the song in a plastic white dress topped with a ram-horned headpiece. Gaga then delivers a speech about her identity and her ‘imprisonment’ before being taken away, screaming, by guards, representing government restriction and ‘betrayal’. After being taken to the top of the castle, Gaga performs Judas, before escaping. Wearing an origami-style white dress, she then performs Fashion of His Love in the castle, followed by Just Dance. Lovegame is performed in a clear bathtub built into the stage before Telephone is performed.
The stage, designed by Gaga herself and her creative team Haus of Gaga, is modeled after a medieval Gothic castle, featuring viewing towers, intricate carvings and a large catwalk to interact with the audience.
Lighting design is by Patrick Woodroffe with Mac Mosier on tour as lighting director. The rig is a self-contained Upstaging production that includes 97 x VL3500 Wash FX, 30 x Clay Paky Alpha Spot 1500 HPE, 17 x CP Alpha Profile 1500, 19 x Martin MAC700 Profile, 2 x Martin MAC700 Wash, 34 x Clay Paky Sharpy, 31 x Selecon Aclaim 650 Fresnel, 68 x Martin MAC Aura, 60 x Chauvet LED Batten, 44 x Colorado LED Batten, 52 x Pixel PARs, 28 x Martin Atomic Strobes, 1 x Shadow Light, 1 x Nova Flower, 1 x Hungaro flash and heaps of LED tape. Control is a MA Lighting grandMA2 console.
Mac Mosier has kindly agreed to conduct a tour of the lighting for the Born This Way show in Melbourne at the Rod Laver Arena on Sunday July 1st.
Where: Rod Laver Arena
When: Sunday July 1st
Time: 2pm
If you would like to attend this tour then email your name and mobile number to tours@alia.com.au Please state whether or not you are an ALIA member. Note that tours cost $20 for non-members. Please ensure that you have read the ALIA Tour Protocol.
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