Madonna wowed thousands of fans with a dance spectacular last night as she kicked off the European leg of her Reinvention Tour.

The star was at the Manchester Evening News Arena in the city for the first UK date of the tour – a mix of classic songs like Holiday from her early days with recent tracks from her American Life album.

Madonna, 45, has thrown off her bullet bras in favour of a more grown-up show.

It was lit with moving LED screens showing the singer in heavy costume as she spoke a passage called The Beast Within.

Thousands of fans stood clapping and screaming as she came up through the floor on a moving stage to sing her hit Vogue.

Wearing black hotpants, a sequinned silver top and knee-high black boots, Madonna belted out the songs surrounded by backing singers and dancers.

She then took to a moving conveyor belt at the front of the stage to perform Nobody Knows Me.

Madonna is set to play tonight and tomorrow in Manchester before taking the tour to London, Ireland, The Netherlands and Portugal.

Manchester last welcomed the singer in 1984 when she played at the Hacienda Club, but she has not been in the north of England since 1987 when she performed at Roundhay Park in Leeds as part of the 1987 Who`s That Girl Tour.

For her 80s hit Material Girl, Madonna played the guitar as the audience sang along.

The next sequence took on a carnivalesque atmosphere as a skateboarder took to a ramp on the stage.

Deeper and Deeper got an acoustic flavour while Die Another Day from the James Bond film of the same title featured ballroom dancing.

An energetic Madonna was then carried by her dancers and strapped to an electric chair in the centre of the stage from which she performed the Lament from Evita.

Before she sang Like A Prayer the singer announced to the audience: “We are just getting this party started. This is a non sitting down song.”

Religious images adorned the screens around her next and she sang a cover version of John Lennon`s Imagine, saying to the audience that the song was just as relevant today as the time it was written.

“It`s funny how history keeps on repeating itself, ” she said to a background of images of children in war torn countries.

For the final section, Madonna donned a Scottish kilt to sing Get Into The Groove with a team of bagpipers.

Then she wore a black T-Shirt emblazoned with the slogan `Brits Do It Better` for her chart topping hit Papa Don`t Preach.

Tickets for tonight`s concert were still available for the show, but there were about 13,000 fans packing the arena.

Source: UTV