Beyonce is known to be one of the quintessential performers of our time. The Queen Bee has set an incredibly high standard for herself with her recordings, performances, and music videos. I would like to take a brief look at how Beyonce maintains continuity with her audience through live performance and her music videos, and also analyze the use of stage design in performance practices as well.

The song we will be looking at is arguably her most famous, “Crazy in Love,” featuring Jay-Z.

This music video has all the tropes of early 2000s stardom. It received 11 awards including the Grammy for Best RnB song. It incorporates all kinds of sex appeal but two that I would like us to pay special attention to: the strut and the group dance. These two characteristics are staples of Beyonce as an icon and should be expected to be seen by an audience member attending her show.

Now I’d like for us to look at a video of a live performance of this same tune.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5TyTPMaf1Q

I’d like to walk through this performance as it relates to stage design and audience’s expectations. For my criteria for judging stage design, I would like to use Es Devlin’s discussion of the topic from Abstract: The Art of Design; Stage Design. In this series she discusses the five basic principles of stage design; light, darkness, space, time, and scale. Beyonce uses these as well as other performance aspects with the music to continually keep her audience enticed and engaged through out the whole performance. It is as if the whole song is one big build up and the energy is carefully cultivated through out to give the viewer an iconic and memorable performance.

Let’s start at the beginning of the video. Beyonce is introduced while the audience waits in anticipation. You can only imagine that since purchasing the ticket they have been fantasizing of what this moment will be like and now it is finally here. Beyonce clearly knows this and builds on this excitement from the very beginning. The stage goes from being completely black to illuminating a white triangle, which often symbolizes power and stability. Right in the center of the triangle, much higher than the actual stage stands the silhouette of Beyonce. The music is ambient and atmospheric. Beyonce is heard singing upon fifths but not seen. The audience is dying to see her, and yet they can only hear her. Her fifths are ornamented with an eastern sounding scale, which gives the silhouetted Beyonce an air of mystery. The drums strike and the lyrics to “Crazy in Love” are heard but it is slower and with a lament bass instead of the original bass line. Her silhouette is now projected on large screens. In terms of scale, she is first scene in front of the giant triangle which is much higher than the audience, giving her this larger than life appearance. As she finishes singing and comes down from being much higher up than the audience the band accelerates the time, thus increasing the excitement to the build up of finally seeing Beyonce in the flesh. Finally, write before the song starts, the band drops out to hear just the voices. As they finish the band comes in even louder, which creates an even more dramatic effect, and while this is going on there is a dramatic shift from darkness to lights, with full fireworks and light show. Beyonce simply has to stand triumphantly at this point. Her persona as an other worldly phenomenon has been established long before this moment by all the elements of stage design used to her advantage, and now in this moment simple standing brings the audience to an immense roar. The darkness at the beginning gave mystery, the scale gave power, and the light gave the big reveal.

Before continuing I’d like to bring to light the fact that the entire band is made up of black women wearing all white. The white being seen before in the enormous triangle that first illuminated the stage and generally represents power and stability. As the song opens Beyonce stands firmly and hypes up the audience, without moving her feet at all. Can you imagine the energy she must be feeling and the self control to not move your feet at all during this opening scene? Shortly before the first verse, she turns and struts away from the audience and this is enough to get another enormous response from the audience. Simply her strut is enough to make them bust out in pandemonium at this point, but that will not sustain them again, she will have to continually up the anti if she is to win over the audience, and she does just that. As she sings the first verse there is a point of rest as she has your full attention and delivers the verse again with out moving her feet at all. As the first verse finishes she simply walks again, this time towards the audience, to another round of applause. Before the second verse she does a little dance, in a group. Which is oddly enough, exactly the same time that dance is seen in the music video. The live performance at this moment is coordinated exactly with the music video to create a seamless experience for the audience.

After the second verse we come to a point in the show that simply can not be like the recording, the rap verse. As we saw in the video earlier, Jay-Z is present in support of Beyonce, but does not come out to rap his verse. Instead there is an instrumental break, in which Beyonce hypes up her horn players to play some lines. These lines are again clearly choreographed, but to the audience, this is all an organic experience, or maybe it isn’t, it actually doesn’t matter, because they are seeing Beyonce and everything she does at this moment is sublime. This is because the audience is experiencing the show emotionally rather than logically. The instrumental break also is something fresh that distinguishes her live performance from her recordings thus creating a unique experience that could only have been experienced live.

At the end of the song she seals the whole performance by showing the breadth of her vocal range and more importantly doing a full group dance. From start to finish we’ve had one momentous build. From utter darkness and mystery, to seeing the star, to seeing her strut, to finally seeing her sing the highest highs and dance her signature group dances. This is a textbook performance and it simply could not be accomplished on this scale without the immense work in stage design, choreography, arranging, and so on. This experience was so carefully crafted by master technicians all working to establish Beyonce is this pop goddess radiating female empowerment and inspiration wherever she goes. The truly cultivate an experience that makes her seem super human and solidifies her as a pop icon for the ages.  

Sources: Beyonce Crazy in Love video. First video

Beyonce Glastonbury performance. Second video.

Beyonce awards search.

https://genius.com/Beyonce-crazy-in-love-lyrics

Netflix Abstract the Art of Design.