Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour Set Is a Dazzling Disco Spectacle
What kind of a backdrop befits a spinning entourage of sequined cowboy dancers and light-footed gymnasts donning sparkly space-age uniforms, accompanied by a diamond-encrusted Beyoncé literally flying atop a holographic horse? A stage set that perhaps only the creative mastermind Es Devlin and the Stufish Entertainment Architects team is capable of bringing to life.
Queen Bey’s Renaissance world tour kicked off May 10 in Stockholm, following her album’s release last July (the tour is currently on its final leg in the states, where it will run until the end of September). It’s the megastar’s first solo tour in seven years, and the performance—the singer-songwriter’s biggest-budget touring set yet, which Forbes predicts could bring in as much as $2.1 billion—took Devlin and her team almost two years to complete. It was worth the wait.
The arena is befitted with a massive, stadium-size green screen, with a giant circular stage portal in the center. The whole structure is further perforated by LED lights that transform the stage into a fully immersive kinetic light show. And that’s just the framework. Over the course of the show’s three-hour, six-act structure, the stage is transformed into a glitzy disco cowboy wonderland (you couldn’t count all the sequins in just one sitting), a hypnotic lipstick-red universe, and an intergalactic sphere of otherworldly forms and metallic hues.
“Beyoncé’s L.A. studio reminds me of Andy Warhol’s factory,” wrote Devlin in a since-deleted Instagram post, according to Huffington Post. All of which was “shot through with the silver-sequinned joy, liberty, and luminosity of LGBTQ+ ball culture.”
The props, too, are absurdly—ludicrously—fantastical. During her performance of the song “Cozy,” Beyoncé is accompanied by two massive dancing robot arms that tower over her, a nod to the face-framing ’80s dance move. That’s followed by a large chrome tank vehicle that the megastar sits atop, performing her 2020 remix of Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage” while anchored to a pole. At one point, campy set pieces like massive cyborg boobs and gigantic robot legs in spread-eagle position make an appearance.
The show then shifts pace as Beyoncé sits perched like Aphrodite in a life-size, rotating translucent seashell. And then there’s the unforgettable finale that nearly broke the internet: Beyoncé straddles a disco-ball-sparkly horse (reminiscent of the one seen in the cover art of her Renaissance album) that lifts off from the main stage to hover above the nearest seating area. All the while, she’s belting her Grammy-award-winning “Summer Renaissance” ballad. It’s the ultimate Afro-futuristic fantasy.
Beyond the show’s larger-than-life props, it’s the set, ultimately, that plays the biggest role in the production. The massive circular stage at the center of the stadium operates at a scale so large that concert attendees in the nosebleed seats are also having an immersive experience. But of course, that’s exactly what you might expect from Devlin.
You’ve undoubtedly seen a Devlin design, even if you didn’t recognize it. The British designer who got her start in theater design in the mid-1990s has worked on an estimated 380 projects, masterminding the stage for Adele, Lady Gaga, and the Weeknd, as well as sets for the Royal Opera House in London, displays at the Super Bowl, and installations for Cartier and Saint Laurent.
Devlin wrote on Instagram that, working alongside Parkwood Entertainment, an entertainment and management company founded by Beyoncé herself, they spent more than a year and a half “constantly sketching the evolving ideas for the Renaissance tour.” Then, meeting with Beyoncé, she recalls how their creative vision further evolved. “As Beyoncé read her poetic lockdown film scripts to us, the show’s three-hour, six-act structure began to emerge,” she wrote.
As with much of Devlin’s work, her vision lies in translating Beyoncé’s words and music into visuals that transcend the dancehall energy of the starlet’s iconic ballads through a range of references. Whether it’s the reclamation of rodeo culture for Black Americans through metallic cowboy garb or a critique of surveillance capitalism via robotic props—or the hardly subtle, gloriously bedazzling optics that are bursting with queer joy—it’s clear that Beyoncé sees her art as a way to do more than make catchy music. And when it comes to translating that to a broad audience, Devlin certainly knows how to bring that center stage.
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