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The telegenic force of nature that is Beyoncé blew into South Florida on Friday night for the launch of a nationwide tour -- the first to showcase the singing, dancing Texas tornado outside of Destiny's Child, the pop-soul vocal group that she carried to fame.
Houston native Beyoncé Knowles, 22, was an overwhelming presence on opening night of the "Ladies First" tour, which sold out its inaugural date at the Office Depot Center and presented three more leading ladies of r&b and hip-hop: Alicia Keys, Missy Elliott and Tamia. Beyoncé's offstage leading man, Jay-Z, even showed up unannounced to do his guest raps on the dizzying single Crazy in Love.
But forces of nature do not discriminate -- they are all roof-ripping power and no finesse. Beyoncé had the awed attention of 15,000 people as she traveled the arena floor on a curtained caravan hauled by serfs. She was impressive to behold hitting the first paces of Baby Boy with nine dancers. But even as she attempted to scale back for the affirming ballad Me, Myself and I, she still was a font of roaring, misplaced energy. Chalk it up to opening-night jitters.
The attraction of the Ladies First tour is the opportunity to see four women with complementary talents, and enough hits between them to fill an hour of Top 40 airtime. But the reality, at least on the tour's first night, was mixed. Apart from the delayed set starts for Beyoncé and Keys, this felt like a program of great moments and missed opportunities -- a production not entirely at ease with its many moving parts.
Keys, the balladeer, played against type, for starters. Anyone expecting her to just sit at the piano and emote would have been surprised by the singing, dancing, catwalking bandleader on stage. Keys opened with choreography that was part Beyoncé and part Gloria Estefan. "I feel so welcome in Florida," she would say later.
But Keys' performance was ultimately a group of songs -- some excellent -- in search of a coherent set. Crowded with prologues, codas, segues and medleys, her 80 minutes on stage felt longer. It was possible to pick out highlights -- the sleek hooks of Girlfriend and a powerfully sung piece of Gloria Gaynor's Never Can Say Goodbye -- but harder to be fully engaged. Spoken passages felt like a case of strained intimacies. Quieter songs stopped momentum in a set that started brassy but lost its pace.
Keys, 23, is formidably talented, but the entries she pulled, as it were, from her new album, The Diary of Alicia Keys, were like most diaries -- more interesting to the author than to anyone else.
Elliott came with a message not unlike that of Beyoncé and Keys. But she had a very different delivery system. On a stage as packed with extras as a nightclub dance floor, Elliott rapped out bits of her greatest hits while a posse of dancers whirled and bobbed around her.
A DJ tucked inside what looked like a giant Fabergé egg spun excerpts from The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly), Pass That Dutch, Work It and other beat-happy hooks that have made Elliott one of hip-hop's most adored figures. Elliott and Co. went through wardrobes like cans of soda, and the whole spectacle, while impossible to break down to performances of individual songs, drove the crowd into a cardio frenzy. Elliott's performance was the least musical but the most compact and effective of the night.
Singing starlet Tamia warmed up for the evening's big three. Her presence indicated that for every established star, there is potential replacement product in the pipeline. This protégé of Elliott might as well have been Beyoncé's understudy -- tall, gorgeous and big of voice. Call her Mini-B.