When Robyn announced her February 5th show at Radio City Music Hall, I was excited and disappointed. After trying to find tickets, for her five previous New York City shows, I would finally get to see her, since she was playing at the city’s second largest venue that once housed gay icons, like Judy Garland and Britney Spears.
But Robyn’s a club kid at heart. She dances around the stage, with carefully choreographed club kid moves, devoid of bigger pop stars’ background dancers and glamorous extravagance. It’s what makes her unique: she plays danceable pop that has the heart of all her fans. While Gaga sings about nonsensical phone calls interrupting her night at the club, Robyn, a singer with actual clubbing experience, sings about the heartache of every kid “who took the bus to town.” How could Robyn, who easily turns Terminal 5 into Club USA every few months, communicate the heartache of every unknown dancer throughout the massive theatre that’s home to the Rockettes?
Either way, I figured the crowd would match the extravagance Robyn lacks. I imagine boys covered in glitter and hags as wrecked as a raver post day glo. Instead, Alison, Belle, and I found ourselves covered in glitter war paint, in an orchestra full of Lactose wearing queens, boring but drug induced teenagers, and a closet case who brought his wife. I expected the soul of Judy Garland to hover around the theatre, not the audience of “doomed queens” that saw her in the fifties. It felt like I blew fifty-five dollars on a lame show, with a lame audience, dressed for a lame night.
As the curtain rose and Robyn walked backward toward the mic, the audience rose. When she turned around, grabbed the mic, and belt the first two lines of “Time Machine,” she exhaled into the audience, destructing their stereotypical gay facades as they inhaled her lyrics, bringing their heartbroken inner dancing queens to life.
Prior to “Dancing on My Own,” her trademark song, the purple lights shined like ray beams around the tiny singer, as she folded her arms around herself, beginning a series of carefully choreographed poses and club moves that seemed both natural and symbolic. She pointed at the audience, climbed into the mezzanine, dived into the crowd, and held onto their hands, with truth, love, and sadness, in her voice, gestures, and eyes. Lacking midgets on trampolines (I’m looking at you, Britney), pools of blood (Sound familiar, Gaga?), and disco crucifixes (Crucify yourself lately, Madonna?), Robyn’s show matched the size of the stage and theatre. As John Guare says, theatre is not big set pieces and flying cast members. It’s emotional height.
In a culture saturated with Lady Gaga’s ten-minute music videos, meat dresses, and “little monsters,” I forgot the power of truthful emotions. Whereas Lady Gaga reminds crowds of her fan adoration, Robyn never mentioned it. She grooves across the stage, dancing with us, for us. She climbs into the top of the theatre, taking a risk as she dives into the mezzanine, trusting her fans to hold onto her, saving her from death. She only talked to the audience to thank us for being her largest audience, as she jumped into the air, fist pumping.
Saturday was Robyn’s triumph. It was the night the indie girl, the Z-100 reject, and the import sold out the most famous venue in America. It was a night fit for Radio City, an American icon, where Fantasia premiered and Judy Garland belted about the rainbow. Standing outside of the venue, posing with my friend, a long time New Yorker, as if we were tourists basking in legendary lights, consumerism, and dreams, made me feel 100% American.
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