Madonna’s MDNA Tour stops by the Air Canada Centre for two shows tonight and tomorrow. The show trekked through Europe and Dubai this summer, creating the expected media whirlwind – from a nipple slip, to brandishing fake machine guns, to championing LGBT rights in ultra-conservative Russia. These incidents make the time when Toronto police threatened to arrest her if she simulated masturbation on stage (which she did anyway) during 1990’s Blond Ambition Tour, seem tame.

Controversy aside, this tour is also one of her most technologically-intricate productions. Madonna collaborated with many of the same people behind her dazzling Super Bowl halftime show from earlier this year, including Cirque du Soleil’s Michel Laprise, who returns as show director.

Montreal-based multimedia production studio Moment Factory was also brought back. “The whole process started right after the Super Bowl. The day after we finished that show, everybody put their minds on the tour,” says Johanna Marsal, a producer at Moment Factory. The company has also worked with many other artists including Arcade Fire, Celine Dion, Jay-Z and Tiesto.

Their mission for the MDNA Tour: Create content to shape the universe, enrich the choreography and intensify the drama of 12 of the show’s 22 songs – including classics “Express Yourself,” “Like A Prayer,” “Vogue,” and recent hit “Hung Up,” where Madonna and her dancers walk across a slackline.

With four months to bring Madonna’s vision from concept to reality, the Moment Factory team created 2D and 3D animation pieces, including a 3D photo-realistic ornate cathedral that serves as the dramatic backdrop for the show opener “Girl Gone Wild.” “The cathedral took us more than a month and a half to create. She really wanted to have a dark and magical beginning,” says Marsal.

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