Beyoncé Made Exactly No Mistakes At Her Concert In Sydney

There’s a moment in this year’s Beyoncé Knowles-Carter documentary, Life Is But A Dream, in which a very small Beyonce and her little sister are playing in a park and being filmed by their father. Beyoncé asks her dad if he can watch the pair race, and shoots in front of Solange immediately. As they careen off into the distance, her father’s voice whispers behind the camera, audibly impressed. “See how fast Beyoncé is?” he says.

The meticulously placed old piece of footage follows a teary video blog from an adult Beyoncé, talking about how formative memories are during that time of your young life. The film, which was self-directed and self-produced, was critically panned for being less of a documentary and more of an extremely filtered and meticulously controlled “high-level propaganda piece”, which was released after (and focused on) Beyoncé’s painful split from her father, and her decision to start managing her own career.

The control Beyoncé has over her narrative and image is well-worn terrain by now. The infamously unflattering photos of her at the Superbowl earlier this year, for instance, prompted the singer to ban all independent photographers from her shows — meaning that the only photos we were able to run of last night’s performance were pre-approved by Beyonce’s people, and uploaded to a media site at 10am this morning.

But whether you think it’s symptomatic of a control freak or the understandable perfectionism of a creative genius, it’s that precision that people paid up to $250 to see last night. If the lip sync fiasco at Obama’s inauguration in February taught us anything, it’s that the world does not want to see Beyoncé make a mistake. And she’ll do whatever she can in her power not to make one again.

The Mrs Carter World Tour is a massive production, and a masterclass in control. An eight-piece, all-female band. A three-piece, all-female backing group (The Mamas). Eleven dancers (including the only two male performers on the tour, France’s incredible Les Twins). An electric guitar that spits fire from both ends. A giant moving screen projecting pre-recorded, visually stunning and occasionally poetic interludes along the recurring theme of majesty – from rags to riches; from girl to ‘Grown Woman’; from Marie Antoinette to an early ’60s pin-up — to distract us during the nine costume changes*.

Pyrotechnics. Flying. Set-changes. Glitter cannons. Glitter everywhere. Really, everywhere. It was always going to be a sensational night.

The show began with a powerful Welcome To Country and didgeridoo solo that somehow managed to feel not-at-all contrived, before the massive ‘B’-emblazoned sheet fell spectacularly onto the stage and was whipped back up again to the opening bars of ‘(Run The World) Girls’. It was an apt way to begin a concert that’s all about the ladies, who — motley as they were; a mix of young and old, sparkled and sedate — outnumbered the men in the audience four-to-one.

Beyoncé is a generous performer, but the first quarter seemed difficult for her; the crowd and the energy took a while to warm up. “This is not the show for you to sit down and be cool, Sydney,” she warned us. “Sing and dance like children, and get lost in this night.” Launching into ‘Baby Boy’ did the trick, and by the time her blue-sequined covered body was floating through glitter from one side of the stadium to the other, she had won us all.

In spite of its bizarrely husband-dependent name, the Mrs. Carter World Tour is about women, strength, independence, beauty, grace and power. On stage, with songs like ‘Survivor’, ‘Single Ladies’, ‘Why Don’t You Love Me’, ‘Diva’ and ‘Grown Woman’, Beyoncé manages to capture all of that.

There’s nothing slight or frail about her; her tiny face is offset by a huge mane of hair (perfectly steered by what must have been a massive team of electronic fans), and her tiny waist is offset by legs which have so much power in them, and yet retain such femininity, that I wanted to applaud each time they were used. Particularly in the fantastic, empowering, Africa-themed ‘Grown Woman’, which debuted as part of a Pepsi commercial earlier this year and which, when performed live (and including a pair of baby carriages being flaunted on stage by the dancers), might be the most Beyoncé song that Beyoncé has put out in a while.

Beyoncé has been criticised for being too robotic, too controlling, too disciplined, too perfect. I can understand the disappointment if you expected a documentary and got a promo instead — but in the live arena, that control pays off.

* Costume changes are a bizarre indulgence of these huge pop productions, and this tour has been criticised for spending so much time off-stage. But if Beyoncé is meant to represent every woman – the lover, the wife, the patriot, the mother, the daughter, the independent Sasha Fierce – the varied and gorgeous costumes did their job.

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The Mrs Carter World Tour

Sydney: November 1, 2 and 3 @ The Allphones Arena – tickets here

Adelaide: November 5 and 6 @ The Entertainment Centre – tickets here

Perth: November 8 and 9 @ Perth Arena – tickets here

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Photos by Rob Hoffman/Invision for Parkwood Entertainment/AP Images