Sex, strippers and scandal: Inside Madonna’s ‘The Girlie Show’ tour 30 years on
nypost.comMadonna continued to push boundaries — and buttons — with The Girlie Show, her most titillating trek of all, in 1993.But while the Queen of Pop was ever the provocateur, she turned to some old Hollywood royalty, Gene Kelly, for a touch of classicism.
The “Singin’ in the Rain” stepper swooped in to choreograph a number for the “Erotica” ballad “Rain.”“When he came in, we were just in awe,” The Girlie Show background singer Donna De Lory told The Post. “He would tell us stories about how back in the day, when he danced with women, he couldn’t touch the women — he had to keep his hand, like, two inches from their body.”But it’s no surprise that this collaboration ultimately didn’t click, with Madonna firing the screen legend, given all the risqué business in The Girlie Show.After the raunchy rollout of her “Erotica” album, “Sex” book and “Body of Evidence” film, the pop superstar had reached a new level of controversy.
Still, that backlash didn’t make her back down when The Girlie Show opened 30 years ago on Sept. 25, 1993 in London — where Madge will also launch her 40th-anniversary Celebration Tour on Saturday night.Now, three decades on, The Girlie Show still remains just as shocking as it did in the early 1990s.
From the moment that a topless Carrie Ann Inaba — now a squeaky-clean “Dancing with a Stars” judge —— slid down that stripper pole, it was a defiant descent into the sexual underworld in the age of AIDS.“She was unabashed and just unapologetically herself,” said The Girlie Show guitarist Paul Pesco. “She was just saying, ‘Hey, this is me.
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