MANHATTAN, NY—From teenage gospel singer to 29-year-old pop sensation, Katy Perry brought her Prismatic tour to Madison Square Garden on July 9.
Katy’s shows are known for her creative stage themes. After getting your ticket checked, you’re given glasses for a part in the show where rainbows are visible as well as colored neon beams. The stage had colorful designs, neon lighting, and inflatable objects, floors that acted as treadmills and multiple costume changes and wigs that went on for almost two hours. The stage was shaped as a prism and the best seat was in the Prismatic Reflection Section, where you’re literally in the stage. In this section, I was able to move around wherever I wanted as she came out from various sections of the triangular-shaped stage. Almost each hit single that she played had a different theme, and she sang various songs from each of her albums. Katy started the show coming out of a prism singing her first single, “Roar,” from her newest album, Prism. The performance included her in a crop top and skirt outlined in neon lights while jumping with glow-in-the-dark jump ropes.
During her other single off of Prism, “Dark Horse,” the whole stage transformed to an Egyptian theme, which included everyone dressed up in gold and silver, while Katy was on a golden horse dressed like a modern day Egyptian queen in her sparkly gold dress with thigh-high boots. To entertain the crowd while she changed, Katy had her dancers dressed as cats running away from another one of her other dancers dressed up as a mouse until she came back out. As she sang “Hot N Cold,” she was dressed up as a cat surrounded by giant scratch toys and her feline dancers. This theme was probably brought into the tour because her fans are called Katy Kats.
One of my favorite parts of shows is when the performer interacts emotionally to the crowd. For this part of the tour, she had a colorful wig mixed with light pink and light blue, a dress with a butterfly design, a hooded cape and sang into a microphone with a sunflower on it. She sang “By The Grace Of God,” “The One That Got Away/Thinking Of You” and “Unconditionally” acoustically. During this segment, she performed a duet with Ferras called “Legends Never Die” for the first time ever.
During the song “Birthday,” Katy picks a person from the crowd who claims that it’s their birthday. They usually have to have an interesting birthday-themed costume on or a birthday hat so that way it’s believable and she can notice them. At one point in the song, she floated over the crowd in a seat with balloons at the top. She ended the show singing “Firework” while she had fireworks coming out from behind her wearing a dress with fireworks designed on it. She then left the venue the same way she got in, from the prism.
If you’re looking for a show where there’s something to look at nonstop, this is the show for you. There wasn’t a moment where something wasn’t happening on the stage. The crowd was constantly involved and she even took a selfie with a fan at one point.
