Beyoncé stuns with a bombardment of the senses in Toronto

Beyoncé bedazzled beyond belief.

For two-and-a-half hours at the Rogers Centre on Saturday night — the official kick-off of the North American leg of her “Renaissance” tour and the first of two successive nights in Toronto — the glamorous singer and songwriter spared no expense in employing an armada of dancers, musicians and state-of-the-art technology to achieve the sexy sci-fi vision that encompasses her latest album.

And boy, there was a lot to unpack.

Using a stadium-stretching stage set that boasted a gigantic screen with something resembling a stargate in the centre of it, and complemented by a rounded platform within a circular stage that was filled in with Beyhive devotees who doled out four figures for the privilege, Ms. Knowles — she also answers to Mrs. Carter, as the wife of hip-hop magnate Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter — paid homage to everyone from “Metropolis” filmmaker Fritz Lang and material girl Madonna to late disco queen Donna Summer and Italian painter Sandro Botticelli.

It was all done with a panache that was no-nonsense, empowering, defiant and lyrically graphic.

Using her latest album “Renaissance — Act 1” as the show’s centrepiece — and yes, she performed the whole record with only a few smatterings of her past catalogue — Beyoncé used a number of chic and ultramodern costumes to communicate themes of love and lust (mostly lust.)

The show began demurely enough: draped in a dress that seemed to consist solely of strands of diamonds — it was an outfit designed by Tiffany & Co. and styled by Shiona Turini — Beyoncé told the crowd she loved them and launched into the vintage Destiny Child’s pop/R&B ballad, “Dangerously In Love” (which also appeared as the title track on her debut solo album.)

The only problem was that you could barely hear her vocals due to the overpowering screaming and regaling by an overexcited audience who had been waiting for their heroine to arrive.

Just before taking her seat on a grand piano for a soulful take on “1+1,” the stunning 41-year-old expressed her gratitude for her fans’ almost three decades of support.

“I’ve been doing what I love since I was 15 when I was in Destiny’s Child,” she told them. “The only reason I’m standing here is because of your love and your loyalty.”

She ended her short six-song set — essentially acting as her own opening act — by paying tribute to one of her greatest inspirations — Tina Turner — with a short snippet of “River Deep, Mountain High” — and then disappeared for a costume change so the real show could begin.

For the following two hours, a bombardment of the senses was unleashed that, truthfully, overwhelmed at times due to the scope of activity that occurred on the multiple stages.

Dissected into sections subtitled “Welcome To The Renaissance,” “Motherboard,” “Opulence,” etc., things got busy mighty quickly, as Beyoncé — dressed in a space-age metallic corset — picked up the tempo with “I’m That Girl” and the pulsing dance beats never really relented from that moment on, whether it was the house feel of “Break My Soul,” the soulfully funky “Cuff It,” the dance hall flavour of “Partition” or the marching band battery accorded “Run The World (Girls).”

Encircled at times by 22 dancers, Beyoncé made it all look so easy, barely breaking into a sweat during some of the more elaborate numbers, her voice full and strong, as her entourage offered numerous exhibitions of body-defying choreography that repeatedly brought screams of encouragement from the adoring crowd.

And the toys! Fan-wielding robots and an armoured land rover of sorts were just some of the hi-tech visual treats she pulled out from her bag of tricks, which included plenty of futuristic animation and symbolic sequences like the singer emerging in embryonic fashion from a sensory-deprivation tank.

At one point, one of the maxims that flashed on the screen read, “Imagination is more important to man than knowledge,” and Beyoncé delved into numerous examples of sci-fi culture to deliver that eye candy.

But as profound and provocative as the onscreen imagery may have been, the onstage message was one of a confident woman coming to terms with her needs and desires. She is a force to be reckoned with, knows what she wants (“Cozy” talks about being comfortable in her skin), needs her space (“Move”), is unapologetically independent (“Thique”) and horny (“Heated.”)

Considering there is reportedly a “Renaissance Act 2” in the can, it’ll be interesting to see where she takes it from here.

But for the rest of her followers, “Queen B” raised the bar in terms of spectacle, although there were two drawbacks: the stargate leading into the inner sanctum where her 10-piece band performed was angled in such a way that views of the musicians were obstructed, depending on one’s seat in the venue — and the Rogers Centre’s domed roof, closed due to rain forecasts — caused the sound to be slightly cavernous, not that it mattered to the thousands that were passionately singing along at the top of their lungs.

For them, Beyoncé is the bomb and the concert left them breathless.

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