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Acrobats And Dancers Dominate Spears' Tampa Concert

Tribune photo by CHRIS URSO

Britney Spears performs Sunday night at the Forum in downtown Tampa.

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By CURTIS ROSS | The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 8, 2009

Perhaps someone involved with Britney Spears' tour should be put in charge of circling important dates on the calendar – like the day the clocks spring forward.

Daylight Savings Time apparently snuck up on Spears, so her show Sunday night at the St. Pete Times Forum was pushed back from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. No problem, apparently, for what appeared to be a capacity crowd.

Judging from the text messages being flashed on the screen during intermission – professing love and worship and declaring Spears "r queen," she could have held the show at 2 a.m. in a minefield and no one would have complained.

A freakish video sequence established the show's "Circus" theme before Spears finally took the stage at 10:20 p.m.

Actually the show was less "Circus" than Cirque du Britney, with acrobats, costumed dancers and stage wizardry dominating.

Truly dominating, because although Spears was at the center of it all, she seemed more lead actor than headliner, her every move as choreographed as the rest of the performers.

Even compared with previous tours by Spears, this show was less a concert than pure spectacle. In fact, there was often so much going on that one could watch for several minutes without once focusing on Spears.

Opening act The Pussycat Dolls are a PG-13 striptease act in which the dancers don't actually take off their clothes. One of the Cats, or Dolls, or however one refers to them, seemed to do most of the singing, although the others occasionally held microphones to their mouths. Since roughly 99 percent of the act is dancing and posing, the songs seem – and sound – like the afterthoughts they probably are. All the numbers, though, contained the one crucial element, a beat to which the Cat-Dolls could both bump and grind.

Reporter Curtis Ross can be reached at (813) 259-7568.

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