MadonnaTribe meets Alex Magno – Part One: Making of The Girlie Show

Twelve years ago this week Madonna launched her Girlie Show tour in London, England, where adoring fans from all over Europe reunited to see what The Queen of Pop had to say on stage after the hugely popular Blond Ambition Tour. The result was a fresh blend of Circus, Cabaret, Theatre and Magic.

To celebrate that magical tour, MadonnaTribe is proud to present the first part of an extensive interview we had the chance to have with Mr Alex Magno, the choreographer of the Girlie Show and co-choreographer of Drowned World tour.

MadonnaTribe meets Alex Magno – Part One: The Making of The Girlie Show.
In this first interview premiering today, Alex will be sharing with our readers his personal “dreams come true” story of how he left his native Brazil to become a professional and successful dancer in the US, but he will also reveal exclusive and interesting behind the scenes stories about the making of The Girlie Show.

Here are some excerpts from this interview that you can read in full by clicking on the image below.

Getting on board:
I got a call from the show’s director Christopher Ciccone asking me to meet him to possibly choreograph the tour. I had a dinner with him in Beverly Hills and he told me the show’s concept and askes me a few questions about my artistry and personal stuff and finally asks me to come in the next day to teach “La Isla Bonita” to the cast of the “Girlie” tour. He gave me a concept to see how I would follow their direction. We ended up not using that concept but never the less they wanted to see what I could do with it. It was kinda crazy. It was based on a old MGM film. It was about a hotel bellboy, hotel helpers and a singer. Madonna was the singer and the dancers were the hotel helpers and they wanted me to do a number like that. They told me the name of the film but I don’t remember it right now. But I’ve seen it and I put something together and I put down a whole concept based on just that.

Bye Bye Baby on MTV:
“Bye Bye Baby” for MTV was actually a number from the tour. I actually wanted to do a different piece for the MTV show, thinking in terms of dancing and dinamycs I wanted to do “Justify My Love”, because it was a huge production number, with all those beautiful costumes. I also had “Beast Within” as another option but it was way too much for MTV at that time, it would have been too controversial. So they decided to do “Bye Bye Baby” and keep it very mild. And also that song sort of represented the whole idea of the “Girlie Show”. The idea of starting a show with a master of ceremony saying “Ladies and Gentleman…”. A perfect teaser for the actual tour.

Girlie Show in Rio de Janeiro:
There were 80.000 people in the stadium. It was a huge thing, I did some interviews with the newspapers there and it was a huge deal with Madonna.
It was the first time of Madonna there and the Brazilian went crazy.

We had to let them in earlier because they were screaming outsite the stadium and they were packed against each other and the firemen had to hold them down. They were singing even before the show started.
We were rehearsing for the show, Madonna was going over some of the songs with normal clothes and the fans came in and watched part of the rehearsals. She was so taken by the atmospheare. She didn’t even have to try to make them party. It was the fans that were saying: “Madonna can you keep up with us? Cause we’re gonna party”.