Taylor Swift performs in Indianapolis on Nov. 1, 2024. (Photo Credit: TAS Rights Management)
By Nina Tadic
When she said “Eras fading into gray” on “imgonnagetyouback”, she may have been referencing the upcoming end of the Eras Tour, but Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour will always be in screaming color for everyone who got to attend it.
Friday night, the tour hit its final US city, Indianapolis, Indiana. With crowds outside of Lucas Oil Stadium lining the streets in droves hours in advance, Indy was ready to give the Eras Tour a hell of a send off. Even Indianapolis’s police horses were decked out with friendship bracelets around their necks, and street signs were transformed to be named for Taylor songs from every era to commemorate the tour. The city went just as hard as the fans, and it has shown for weeks. However, even with a sold out show that broke the attendance record for Lucas Oil, nobody expected what was to come. In true Indiana fashion, everyone who attended gave it their all. The outfits, the costumes (including a fully feathered albatross in the front row), the bracelets… The energy in that arena was the kind of electricity that a solar storm couldn’t compete with. The most beautiful part was seeing such a range of people all excited to be there, all knowing that the Eras tour was something they would remember their whole lives.
Watching Taylor’s protege, Gracie Abrams, open the tour was also quite magical – her charisma on stage was phenomenal and her elegance while performing was something comparable to someone far her senior. In front of a mass of 69,000 attendees, she held them on a string. Opening with “Risk” off of her new album The Secret of Us and closing with every Swiftie’s favorite, “Us” (a track that Taylor co-wrote and performed on the album) was also a complete power move by Gracie.
Abrams thanked fans individually for attending her entire set, walking up and down the catwalk and diamond, smiling at them each, waving, and making sure everyone knew that she could see and hear them as they sang along to her music and knew every word. Some fans even managed to gently toss her a few bracelets, and you could see that those moments meant so much to her, genuinely.
Before closing her set, she made sure to let the crowd know that Taylor could hear them singing from her dressing room, and requested the audience to duet on “Us” with her in Taylor’s honor. From that moment, the audience’s voices were so loud it felt like they’d amplified ten-fold from moments before.
Swaying in her regal, flowing blue dress while playing her guitar, she seemed so timeless, and truly like a young Taylor Swift herself. It takes a certain kind of talent to captivate a crowd of that magnitude and make it look as effortless as Gracie did. She left the audience with a buzzing that continued until the second Taylor took the stage – and then it grew into something unfathomable.
From the moment the clock finished counting down the anticipation was so tangible in the air you could cut it with a knife. Storm clouds rolled in on all screens and almost magical cyclones of clouds and smoke appeared across the stage and suddenly dancers with sunset colored fans 20 and 30 feet high begin moving across the catwalk walking fanning spinning almost looking like living flower petals and as snippets of voice recited clips of each album title each era the crowd erupted again and again with cheers. When her dancers with fans draped them down over the stage to cover it, you could see everyone in the room on the edge of their seat, on the tips of their toes, screaming and cheering. and as the fans lifted into the air, underneath was a sparkling blue and gold bodysuit-wearing, glowing barbie doll of a woman. The person that everyone had been waiting to see in the flesh –Taylor Alison Swift.
Though everyone has seen countless videos and photos of the eras tour, there is nothing that can prepare one for the absolute radiance that that woman has on stage surrounding her. It becomes immediately clear that her costume design was done with one thing in mind… or maybe a few things –vibrance, attention to detail, the energy surrounding that era, and the ability for Taylor to be seen from every seat in the arena, no matter how far back in the stands. Like a living disco ball in thigh high boots, she struts across the stage singing every word to Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince – her first song to be performed from lover. She flawlessly transitioned into cruel summer, a song that has been a hit among Swifties for years, and had its shining moment of radio play this past summer. She bantered with fans letting them know when they arrived at the first bridge of the evening and invite them to “cross it” with her –at which point an outstanding crowd of 69,000 people belted out the lines “I’m drunk in the back of the car and I cried like a baby coming home from the bar so I’m fine but it wasn’t true I don’t wanna keep secrets just to keep you every night for whatever it’s worth I love you ain’t the worst thing you ever heard?” In that moment, Taylor Swift is a kid on Christmas. Her smiles are infectious as she finishes out the song surrounded by towers of smoke and thundering bass and a stage lit up in sunset pink and oranges and purples.
The Lover set continues with Taylor’s flirting banter as she kisses her biceps and lets the crowd know that they are making her feel so powerful. “you’re making me feel like I am the man” she states as she shimmies into a blazer, Black and sparkling, assisted by one of her dancers, before she begins dancing across the stage again herself, singing about being complex and cool and the double standards that women face through sexism every day. Following this performance on light up scaffolding (where she makes her way to the top of the corporate ladder), Swift makes her way back down the stage. She is surrounded by an entourage of backup singers and dancers, following her lead all the way through the vibrant, fun, pop track and LGBTQIA+ anthem, “You Need to Calm Down.”
This is the point in the evening where it becomes insanely apparent how much attention to detail Taylor pays when planning her concert experiences. Upon entering Lucas oil stadium every fan in attendance has been given a white light up bracelet that essentially does nothing until Taylor takes the stage. However, when she does, these bracelets begin using Geolocation to light up in a coordinated light sequence for each song, creating an interactive light show that spans the entirety of the arena, and also allows Taylor to be able to see everyone in the arena individually. During “You Need to Calm Down,” these bracelets make a confetti like shimmer throughout the stadium and every color of the rainbow, and at some point, also make a rainbow in stripes, that circles the entire arena in time to the track.
The light up wristbands are in use all night, but “You Need to Calm Down” is one performance where they truly have their shining moment and amplify the performance tenfold. Following “You Need to Calm Down,” Swift removes her jacket and trades it for a baby blue acoustic guitar –she thanks fans for joining her on the eras tour experience, and tells them that she hopes that after tonight every memory they have of these songs Will suddenly be about their experience with her at the eras tour. She then begins her serenade of the album title track lover, while being surrounded by dancers – Pairs of couples slow dancing beautifully.
Taylor Swift performs in Indianapolis on Nov. 1, 2024. (Photo Credit: TAS Rights Management)
After her performance of Lover has ended, she slowly sinks beneath the stage. Her transition into her next era – it’s quite a fun one. As the stage darkens the screens suddenly show a curtain of bubbles rising, and suddenly the opening notes of Fearless begin. Swift takes the stage, this time in a dress Swifties have deemed the tiger stripe dress. This dress is all fringe and reflective Black, golden, silver, and emphasizes every ounce of movement as she skips across the stage, twirls, and hula dances through this set.
She instantly takes fans back to high school with songs like “Love Story” and “You Belong with Me.” She skips shimmies and dances surrounded by her back up vocalist who shine in gold bomber jackets, act out the lyrics to the songs as she sings them. At the end of Fearless’s short sweet and shimmering set, Taylor’s backing band performs a fantastic interlude as the stage is lit up with golden sparkles and pyrotechnics rain from the ceiling, the lover house on the stage “burns down”, and a new era begins.
A giant black box is rolled out onto the stage by a dancer all in red and every time they take a peek inside the box a snippet from the album pieces of “State of Grace” and the title track are shared before fans begin to sing along and continue them. And then the dancers open and the stage is covered balloons floating to the ceiling signify the beginning of the concert. Many know that this was when she began to pivot from country into pop and was a transitionary era that launched her into space as an artist. She makes her way onstage in a black fedora and an oversized sequined white T-shirt that says “I Bet You Think About Me”. This is a dance party for the entire arena, and one where Taylor does not stand still for a second until the very end. Performing songs like “I Knew You Were Trouble” and “We are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” she takes her way up and down the catwalk across the diamond twirling dancing and skipping nonstop the entire time – dancers the same. The LED flooring of the stage rays of light and neon diamonds pulsing and moving the entire time. That entire era is a highlight of the show; the two pivotal moments in it are the 22 hat, and a song that takes “10 minutes to spare.”
Every night Taylor and her team select a fan from the crowd who is having a fantastic time to receive the hat that she comes out on stage for “22” in. On this particular night, the fan selected is a little girl. Her excitement is infectious and everyone in the room cheers as she gets her a hug from Taylor and the hat right off her head a memory of a lifetime this girl surely will never forget what happened to her at the store. The other extremely special moment of the era is when Taylor decides to perform “All Too Well 10 Minute Version (Taylor’s Version)”, a song that fans have helped her fall in love with over the past handful of years. “All Too Well”, a heartbreak anthem, was one that Taylor rarely performed prior to the tour, but after seeing the reaction of fans every time she performed it, began to incorporate it into her set more often. Now that the 10 minute version has been released on Red TV, and has been exponentially more successful than anyone could’ve fathomed as a 10 minute song, Swift decided to incorporate it into her set. Wearing a floor-length red-to-black sequined duster, and a bodysuit and guitar to match, she serenades the room in a way that makes every single person feel as if they are the only one there. During the lines of the song about fall, paper leaf confetti rains to the floor, and during the line “first fall of snow,” everyone’s wristbands are shining blue and white light as white snow confetti blows across the room, a singular spotlight fixes on Taylor making the moment more intimate than anyone could’ve fathomed ahead of time. Opting to include a 10 minute song in a 3 1/2 hour performance is something brave, because in that timespan, she could’ve performed three shorter songs even – but she knew that the impact “ATW10MVTV” would far outweigh that of nearly any other three songs at this point in time.
After she makes her exit from the stage, she is replaced by a string of lavender-dressed ballerinas spinning across the back of the stage, while backed by a beautiful animation of purple flowers blooming – her intro to the Speak Now set. And then, like Cinderella herself, Swift enters the stage, walking through a shroud of lavender smoke in a purple “gown shaped like a pastry”. She takes center stage in the middle of the diamond as she belts out the lyrics to “Enchanted” on a platform that slowly rises to make her even more so the center of attention during this magical fairytale moment. Around her, lyrical ballerinas dancing and twirling frame her like a true princess. “Enchanted” is the only Speak Now song performed, but it is a song that resonates and captivates everyone with magic in an instant. After she runs back through the door she came from, the stage goes black. Viewers are greeted with snippets of piebald pythons, close-ups of other snake scales, hissing, and then the click of hard heels striding across the floor. And just like that, the games begin.
The reputation set is fierce, feisty, and fantastic. During “Ready for it…?”, not a person in the room is standing still. Suddenly the Eras Tour is a club night, and everyone is moving and shaking like there is no tomorrow. During “Delicate”, the enthusiasm with which the crowd screams “one, two, three, let’s go bitch!” is incredible and hilarious. Taylor herself gets into it as well, counting off the 1-2-3 on her fingers as the crowd is shouting back to her. During “Don’t Blame Me”, Ms. Swift takes the whole crowd to church, belting and hitting notes that the average person could not dream of holding for the amount of time she does – and she leaves everyone stunned, even those who knew it was coming. When she transitions from “Don’t Blame Me” into a guitar shredding, maniacal, villain-arc version of “Look What You Made Me Do.” Mimicking the music video for “Look What You Made Me Do”, she incorporates plenty of “the old Taylors” into the performance. All of her backup dancers wear replicas of her old outfits, including a cheerleader outfit from the “Shake It Off” video, her beaded aqua BCBG Max Azria dress worn at a live performance in 2007, and even her pink fur coat from the “You Need to Calm Down” video. Each of the old Taylors is locked in a glass case (probably a reference to her old masters being owned by Scooter Braun) until the end of the performance, when they all try to come for her. Her attention to detail is unreal and this is just one more moment that emphasizes that.
By the time you’re at the reputation set end, the concert is over a third of the way done but still feels like it’s just beginning. The folklore / evermore set, which floats between the two albums, is magical and woodsy and feels like a warm blanket that is comforting to everyone in the crowd. The stage is animated with snakes slithering through moss, before fireflies float all over in the dark. Trees grow and the folklore cabin appears, with Taylor herself on the moss-covered roof, performing a beautiful rendition of “cardigan” in a floor length, berry dress. During “betty” she talks about how during the pandemic she chose to go into her mind and create a world of fictional characters and relationships between them (one of those characters being Betty, obviously). She performs the song on a beautiful acoustic guitar painted with flowers and birds, sitting on the steps of the folklore cabin alongside her backing vocalists who sway back-and-forth to the song.
Then we come to “champagne problems”, performed on a giant moss-covered grand piano, a cottagecore dream to witness. Following “champagne problems” is an encore given by the crowd. This has become a fan-made tradition throughout the tour, and a bit of a competition between the cities. Who can cheer for Taylor the longest? Who can make sure she knows how much they love her solely by clapping, jumping, cheering, and screaming? Indianapolis sure can. During a four minute applause, there are multiple moments where the cheers begin to die. Instead of the applause ending, though, the crowd begins stomping in the bleachers like they would at a high school basketball game – and it grows louder and louder, mimicking a thunderstorm throughout the stadium. The shock on Taylor’s face is precious and hilarious, and she is nearing tears as she is so in awe of this crowd. “Indianapolis, on behalf of me in my band and my dancers, I want to thank you, because this is something we will never forget,” she says. It is viscerally clear that she is 100% serious.
Finally, she leaves the piano to perform a beautiful medley of “august” into “illicit affairs”, two pieces of the same story. As she flits across the stage in her flowing dress, the billowing sleeves blowing around her, and the skirt flowing and swaying, she truly does look like a young Stevie Nicks, all motion and magic. The stage behind and beneath her begins in a beautiful watercolor of red, oranges, yellows, and pinks, an impressionist painting that is nothing short of entrancing. As the plot of the two songs grows darker, so does the stage, fading entirely to shades of greige. Taylor screams “don’t call me kid, don’t call me baby,” strands of loose hair framing her face, her expression so wounded and crushed that folks in the crowd cannot help but nearly be moved to tears.
As there is no shortage of emotional moments during the folklore / evermore set, it is only fitting to witness a metaphoric funeral on stage during “my tears ricochet,” while Taylor shares her grief with the crowd about the loss of her old masters and the betrayal surrounding that time in her life. Following this painstakingly beautiful performance, one complete with back up vocalists in shimmering black funeral dresses, visuals of a cemetery, candles being lit with tears, and even a battleship sinking into a whirlpool in the ocean, Taylor gives us a warmer and softer performance – “marjorie”. Named after her grandmother, this track is an ode to the pain of losing a loved one, wishing you could go back and relive moments with them, and cherishing the memories that you do have to carry with you, knowing they are always around you. At this point? Tears are inevitable. Taylor knows that, however, because she goes directly from these more intense, emotional songs right into one that is flirty and fun – “willow”. Lightning strikes, the “sky” onstage goes dark, and suddenly there is a coven of witches holding glowing orange orbs, shrouded in brown velvet cloaks, performing what fans have called “tayvoodoo” in time with this whimsical, wintery track.
After “willow” ends, folklore / evermore have ended, and fans are transported to another nostalgic era, 1989. The album was filled with hit after hit when it was first released, and the way fans react to those songs still held true at the release of 1989 TV last year, nearly a decade later, and still is so now on the Eras Tour. Taking the stage in a Barbie-pink sparkling skater skirt and a crop top, Taylor pays homage to her tour outfits from the original 1989 World Tour while singing about the “James Dean daydream look in your eyes” (“Style”), swinging a neon golf club into a (digital rendition) sports car (“Blank Space”), “shake, shake, shake”ing it all over the catwalk (“Shake It Off”), and bringing it back around with plenty of pyro and drama for the last two tracks of the set (“Wildest Dreams”, “Bad Blood”).
And then it becomes time to experience Taylor’s newest album and an era that had not been performed live on US soil until quite recently: The Tortured Poets Department. For a woman with a limited amount of time on stage, she sure knows how to pack in a show. This set specifically is seven tracks long, but moves like lightning.
The stage opens to what appears to be a strip of road going through the desert, completely empty in a gray/sepia tone, as prison bars and pieces of cages fall from the sky, landing in different areas of the desert on screen. Then, her entourage of dancers, all in solid white in a single file line, march their way down the stage reminiscent of prisoners, or patients in a decades-old insane asylum. And then she makes her appearance.
Wearing a custom Vivienne Westwood (VW) white corset dress with a high-low skirt covered in the phrases “who is afraid of little old me?” and “you should be” made out of black rhinestones (perhaps inspired by a jacket embroidered with phrases by its owner – Agnes Richter – who was in an 1890s insane asylum). She also stuns in a set of matching short heels, white rhinestoned gloves, and a pearl VW choker. She is the queen of the stage, and captivates everyone yet again from the second she pops up, running across the stage belting the lyrics to “But Daddy I Love Him” with a burning desert behind her (“I’d rather burn my whole life down”).
Some of the best visuals in her entire Eras Tour take place during this set – one of which worth noting is the set of stained glass windows behind her as she kneels in the center diamond with prayer hands and performs the bridge of “But Daddy I Love Him”. As “But Daddy I Love Him” ends, she transitions into “So High School”, at which point the risers on stage become bleachers at a football game, and she is all smiles sitting on them, swag surfing, and singing her heart out. Following this is “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”, a performance that has been coined part of “Female Rage: The Musical” by Taylor herself on her Instagram. For the entirety of this song, Taylor travels across the stage on a mirrored platform (dubbed by fans the “Tayroomba”), giving the illusion of levitation – an homage to the song itself.
The performance is passionate, spirited, and a glorious representation of the song’s lyrics. It showcases Taylor as headstrong, ferocious, and bloodthirsty – all a reflection of the media’s critiques of her. She is an artistic genius, and has given the public a beautiful dichotomy of what she truly is versus the way the media wants to portray her – and respectfully, the Swifties love every facet of it, in the best way.
She follows this song up with “Down Bad”, continuing to float around on her mirrored platform, leaving a “trail of stars” beneath her and a UFO on the screen behind her attempting to “beam her up”. Later, the crowd is gifted with the first single of the album, “Fortnight”, during which Taylor is wheeled around the diamond on a raised TTPD bed frame, while Jan, one of her dancers, plays her lover, opposite her on the bed frame. The two are opposite one another with a typewriter in between – a great detail that alludes to the album. They dance around one another delicately while the bed frame is pushed around by orderlies from an asylum. All incredible details that create a performance that is flawless. And yet this performance does not even begin to compare with the next one, “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”.
Taylor is helped into a marching band jacket, before leading her “army” drumline across the stage for the song. As she is “defeated” over the course of the song, and the white flag is waved, she collapses into a crumpled pile of a woman on the stage, as does her army, a glorious piece of theater that is absolutely striking to watch. Closing out The Tortured Poets Department is “I Can Do It with a Broken Heart”. This is definitely the most fun and playful performance of The Tortured Poets Department set. It begins with a silent film style moment, where Taylor, the hysterical female protagonist, has passed out and has to be carried to her chaise. Two men in top hats awaken her, change her clothes, and parade her about like a puppet, before forcing her to put on a show for the crowd. Once the “show” begins, with Taylor in a white, shimmering two-piece set and a long, white sparkling jacket, it is dazzling. Dancers in tail-coats and top hats move canes and tap shoes, dancing in unison behind her. They follow her, fanning her with feathers, and raise and spin her in the air. It is the epitome of an old Hollywood show, and her dance moves call back to other performances from the Eras Tour – an intentional fourth-wall break that has not gone unnoticed by fans. Finally, once she is done “doing it with a broken heart”, we have made it to what some fans would consider the most exciting part of the night. Some may even be a little bit afraid… no one knows what is to come next… thus begins the acoustic section!
Taylor created the acoustic section as a way to challenge herself to perform new variations of tracks from every album, and is a way to make sure she could perform as many tracks from her albums as possible throughout the tour. At the beginning of the tour, the rules given by Taylor included that she would perform one song on the acoustic guitar, and one on an upright piano. They could be from any album or era, but could not be repeated from one date to another unless she made a mistake during the initial song performance. Later, she started to incorporate repeats once most of the songs she had written had already been performed, and to shake things up further, she is now doing one acoustic guitar mashup and one piano mashup.
Taylor Swift performs in Indianapolis on Nov. 1, 2024. (Photo Credit: TAS Rights Management)
Since The Tortured Poets Department is still fairly new she is more likely to perform a track off of it as part of one of the mash ups as of recent – this was absolutely the case on Friday night when she started the surprise songs with an acoustic mashup of “The Albatross” from The Tortured Poets Department and “Holy Ground” off of Red (Taylor’s Version). No one truly knows what causes Taylor to pick the songs that she does for this section, but I do think it’s safe to say that she may have seen more than one attendee dressed as a giant bird near the front of the stage on Friday night, and that may have inspired her to perform said bird song (“The Albatross”). Regardless, it was absolutely breathtaking to watch her in her purple, red, and blue dress, strumming her guitar and serenading the crowd, as everyone sang along word-for-word, completely enamored by her beautiful performance. The piano mashup, however, seems to be the superior of the two, as far as rarity goes.
Earlier in the night Taylor mentioned that she’s been performing in Indianapolis since she was 15, nearly two decades ago. Therefore it only makes sense that she would pull out her original track five (note: Swifties refer to “track 5s” as Taylor’s most emotionally intimate/deep cut songs on her albums), “Cold As You.” Every Taylor Swift fan in the house was absolutely ballistic from the second they heard “You have a way of coming easily to me,” leaving Taylor’s mouth. No one knew what she would mash it up with, though, and the screams were deafening when she merged into “exile”, an absolutely gutting folklore track. On the album, “exile” features the artist Bon Iver, and though he was not in the room on Friday night, the crowd made sure it felt like he was – duetting his parts with Taylor in response to her parts. By the time the mashup ended, fans all across the room looked so stunned, giddy, and absolutely over the moon… and so did Taylor.
The acoustic section of the Eras Tour is absolutely crucial, and truly does offer something special for each night, giving fans a memory to hold onto that is so uniquely theirs from their Eras date. And it’s no secret that Taylor loves it as well, giving her little smirks and giggles as she sees peoples’ reactions to the song she’s chosen.
Following the surprise songs, Miss Swift does a swift dive through this stage, which then lights up in the illusion of water with her swimming beneath it. Storm clouds appear behind her onscreen. Giant lavender clouds on ladders are wheeled out onto the stage by dancers dressed in all 70s outfits. Midnights has begun, starting with “Lavender Haze”. In a purple fur coat and a silver sequined shift dress, Taylor makes her way back out onto the stage. The bass is booming, the dancers are grooving, and the crowd is absolutely loving it.
Partway through the song Taylor begins to have issues with her mic pack batteries and without missing a beat of the performance, asks if they can be changed. She does not miss a single step, nor a single note, as one of her sound team members comes out to swap her batteries. She does have to do a little dance to make her dress go all the way back down as it gets snagged in the back on the mic pack, but she turns it into a silly moment that leaves the crowd giggling, and her laughing, as well. Throughout “Anti-Hero” she seems to struggle with her in-ear monitors being on the fritz, which those in the music industry know can be quite a challenge for a performer of this magnitude who is playing on a click track. (For those who don’t know, a click track is a tool used by an artist that is somewhat like an ear metronome that helps them keep on pace with the song, and during a performance of this magnitude is a necessity). For Taylor to perform with a technical difficulty like this and still manage to keep time through the entirety of “Anti-Hero”, “Midnight Rain”, and “Vigilante Shit” truly shows how much she rehearses, and how on her game she is as an artist. She does apologize to the crowd multiple times for the technical difficulties during the Midnights set, but it is visibly apparent the fans do not mind at all, because she gives such a seamless performance it is nearly untraceable that she is having a single problem.
The Midnights set is also a set where Taylor makes it a point to acknowledge all the different sections of the crowd, and make sure everyone feels like she can see them, yet again. During “Anti-Hero”, she walks all the way up the sides of the stage, making sure to wave to everyone from the floor all the way up to the nosebleeds. During “Midnight Rain” she paces down the catwalk, first in her shift dress, and then back (after a quick-change under a shield of black umbrellas), in her beautiful chevron bodysuit that is shimmering in a rich, deep blue, a gentle smile on her face and twinkle in her eye as she looks over the crowd.
For “Vigilante Shit”, she is serious and sexy, a femme fatale on stage doing a simplistic yet absolutely iconic chair routine alongside all of her female dancers in matching bodysuits. And when she’s done being a complete badass, she reminds everyone what it’s like to have silly, bouncy, sparkly fun during “Bejeweled”! The main stage screen shows her face made of jewels, and the screens stage left and stage right capture her and the dancers having a dance off, surrounded by sparkling jewels, as well. You could say they “polish up real nice” (and yes, Dear Reader, during dancer Kam Saunders’ solo, the crowd does indeed go absolutely ballistic for him). The relationship Taylor’s fans have with her dancers, vocalists, and band is something rarely seen with a major artist, and is something that is so much fun to watch throughout the entire night – this just happening to be one of those moments.
With two tracks to go, Taylor first does a stunning performance of “Mastermind”, the flooring beneath her an optical illusion in black-and-white – checkerboarding, swirling, moving, as she and her dancers march in unison to certain spots onstage in time to the stage itself transforming.
This in itself is another piece of information worth noting about the Eras Tour. Taylor was absolutely sure when designing this tour to utilize the entire stadium for her performance art – she uses the light up wristbands, she uses pyrotechnics and smoke effects, confetti and fireworks, she uses 3-D props that grow out of the stage and are wheeled in and out, she uses rising and lowering platforms to emphasize different areas in the room, she perform dance routines that utilize the entirety of the catwalk, not to mention the main stage. The stage screens and screens throughout the stadium are constantly in use showing different perspectives and different videography and 4D-renderings to represent the songs being performed, the entire stage floor not only lights up, but is interactive with Taylor’s choreography. Whether you are seeing the Eras Tour from the back row of the stadium as far as humanly possible from the stage, or you are in the front row at the end of the catwalk, you will have an all-encompassing experience.
To close out the night, Taylor is assisted into a shimmering blue confetti jacket, while her dancers and vocalists slip into their own jackets in every color of the rainbow. “Karma” is a track that is full of energy, and the perfect way to tie up the evening. The screens onstage are a galaxy swirl of kaleidoscope colors, the dancers are shimmying and shaking like they’re made of electricity, and Taylor herself makes her way across every single edge of the stage, waving, smiling, and laughing at every fan as she does so. Fireworks in a rainbow shoot out from behind the stage, and smaller ones stream towards the ceiling from different points down the catwalk. Confetti flies over the stage and the floor, and Taylor lines up her cast for a bow – first her dancers, then her backing vocalists, then her band. She thanks the crowd, makes one more round of waves and applause, and then exits the stage, leaving everyone completely dumbfounded in wonder by the whimsy they’ve seen onstage all night. And following the night’s closing? End credits run across the screen, introducing every dancer, vocalist, performer, and behind the scenes crew member as “The Alchemy” and “Clara Bow” play. Some fans scoop up confetti, others just sit in their seats in wonder.
Needless to say, the Eras Tour is breathtaking from the second it starts until long after the audience takes those memories home with them. Taylor Swift may perhaps be one of the greatest performers to ever live – and whether or not she will ever say so herself, it is no secret that everyone who has seen her performance on the Eras Tour will think so for years and years to come.
(Photos courtesy of TAS Rights Management)