WOULD YOU LIKE TO RIDE?

If you ask to a fan which is his favorite song or his favorite show of his preferred artist, he will find himself in a very difficult sitution. That's because a true fan loves whatever his artist does and can truly understand the messages hidden behind all the creations of his favorite artist, so the idea of choosing something and not something else is frustrating because it is seen and lived as a rejection and a refusal of part of the artist's creation and growing up process. That's my case with Madonna.

She's so inspiring in everything she does and that's why I really admire her and her art and it's very difficult for me to say which of her creations I like the most 'cos I love them all in different ways, for different reasons in different moments of my life.

But if I had to choose to see for the very last time one of her performances, right now I think I'd choose the opening act of her Confessions Tour when she performs Future Lovers/I Feel Love.

I had the chance to see her in Rome in 2006, on August 6th at Stadio Olimpico with other 70.000 fans coming from all over the world.
I personally think that she's amazing dressed in her black Jean Paul Gaultier equestrian outfit and this kind of entrance is both spectacular and magical.

The opening video is directed by the visionary artist Steven Klein, one of the best photographer of our times and Madonna plays the role of a horse rider in an outfit with some S&M reminescents while she sings and dances between her male dancers dressed with "horse-inspired" costumes.

At the same time, in the backdrop videos, Madonna dances imitating the moves of a a horse and she's portrayed like a modern "human-horse".

The atmosphere, the colors and the setting of this video recalls in my mind the ancient greek myth of the Centauromachy.

The Centaurs were hybrid  legendary creatures of the Greek mythology half-human and half-animal. They are portrayed as creatures with the torso of a human, joined at the waist to a horse's withers. This mythological creature with two natures (the human one and the animal one) should represent the outcome of a mix between the human being's thinking ability with the untamed potency and strength of an animal. The upper part of the centaur indeed is the one that is faced  to heaven (the Greek "Hyperuranium"), the world of perfection, and stands for "the reason" while the lower part of the centaur's body is faced to the earth and stands for the untamed strength, the passion, the animal brutal impulses and the "un-reason". So a centaur is a creature in which both natures co-exist at the same time.

Steven Klein seems to be obsessed with the "human-horse" theme. He's worked on this concepts in many other works and shootings.

So Madonna decided to portrayed herself as a modern centaur in this performance. She can be both rebellious and beautiful, smart yet dangerous, good and evil. She's the good one who has to tame her horse-dancers but at the same time she's an evil and bad creature that has to be tamed.

It's a play between opposite concepts.

And meaning (and art as well), arises only when there is a tension, an opposition of concepts (as the French semiotics professor Jean Marie Floch used to said).

Madonna seems to have learnt the lessons. Her creations are so full of meanings and inner tensions and that's the reason why we can call her performances "ART".