Celebrating 7 Years Of The Circus: Starring Britney Spears Tour!

The Circus starring Britney Spears, in support of Britney’s sixth studio album ‘Circus,’ celebrates it’s 7^th Birthday today!

The stage was set ‘in-the-round’ to resemble three circus rings. Upon announcement of the tour, Britney sold out of 500 000 tickets prompting her to add more tour dates. At the time, the tour became the fifth highest grossing tour by a female celebrity.

The set list prior to the start of the show, to ‘warm’ the crowd up, was Britney’s own personal playlist, which included, Jay Z, Beyonce and Madonna.

Fun Fact: Britney wished her fans a Merry Christmas half way through her DC show in March. Why, you ask? Well she lost a bet with one of her dancers…

Ever wondered how Britney managed to get to the centre of the stage prior to her performance? Well, she was brought in by her bodyguards in a stage box to avoid anyone noticing. Sorry to destroy the magic…

During the London, O2 arena dates, Britney had a full fairground outside, to go along with the Circus theme.

The Circus tour had full professional filming intended for DVD, however this has never officially been released… much to our despair.

During one of her shows a fan jumped up on stage to try and get close to Britney. Instead of an endearing meet and greet, he scared the bejesus out of her…

The Australian leg of the tour was also professionally filmed, can we have the DVD now please?

A world tour was first rumoured during October 2007 – for her Blackout album, unfortunately this was cancelled and instead a world tour was announced again in December 2008. The tour focused heavily on the ‘In The Zone’ and ‘Blackout’ albums, with only 3 songs actually focusing on her ‘Circus’ album. The original playlist was posted online, which turned out to be fake. Either that or there were some major changes. This can be found HERE.

Critics hailed the show as a pop extravaganza that only someone like Britney could achieve.

The tour included an Australian leg, which was an unusual move for Britney. She claimed that she always wanted to tour in Australia and this was her opportunity.

In October 2008, Britney hired fan favourite, Wade Robson as the director for her tour, who also worked on her ‘Dream Within A Dream’ tour as a choreographer. Andre Fuentes was hired as the choreographer for the tour. Wade Robson announced that his wife Amanda Robson would be co-creative director and that rehearsals would start in January 2009. However, for an unknown reason, both Robson and Fuentes were replaced by Jaime King, who previously worked with Britney on her ‘Oops! I Did It Again’ tour.

During an interlude, Britney shocked fans and critics alike, by including Marylin Manson’s, ‘Sweet Dreams,’ as a backing track. This turned out to be one of the most iconic moments from the show.

‘Mannequin,’ made the set list on certain tour dates, however was later removed before her European dates.

Britney stated that the reason why, ‘Blackout’ featured heavily on the tour was due to her not having a chance to perform many tracks form that album and really liked the album. She felt like the album deserved a tour.

‘Everytime’ was not included on the official set list however was performed regularly on the show.

Britney’s outfits all had duplicate numbers in case of any problems. Six women were hired to manage the outfits and they were all numbered in sequence. It was revealed that the outfits had $150,000 worth of Swarovski crystals.

The tour featured a Bollywood style performance of, ‘Me Against The Music,’ which was praised by critics and fans alike.

Britney brought many fans on stage to perform a sexy number, Lance Bass from N*SYNC being one of them.

Britney’s performance at the American Airlines Arena, broke the record for attendance, previously held by Celine Dion.

The four shows in the Acer Arena in Australia, Sydney, sold 66,247 tickets, over 4 dates, making Britney the highest selling act ever at that Arena.

Britney was the fifth highest grossing tour of 2009 worldwide with $131.8 million. In 2010 Hollyscoop listed the tour as the fifth most profitable female tours ever.

In Australia, The Minister For Fair Trading for New South Wales, Virginia Judge, said she was aware that Britney would be lip-syncing part of the show and with such a demanding dance show, this would be acceptable. She considered including disclaimers on promotional materials and tickets, indicating that portions of the show wold be pre-recorded. Steve Dixon followed on to say, ‘This is a pop spectacular, this is a showband show. You come for the experience. There is a lot to see about this show, there is nothing like this in the world. Britney Spears will entertain you, that’s what people come for. We absolutely give them a show.’’

After the opening night in Perth, ‘The Advertiser’ writer, Rebekah Delvin reported that people walked out the show as they were, ‘outraged’ and ‘disappointed,’ due to parts of the show being lip-synced. This turned out to be a complete lie and questioned Delvin’s credibility as a journalist. Paul Dainty, an Australian Tour promoter stated, ‘’It’s the biggest lie I’ve ever heard. I’m so angry. We can take heat if there’s something wrong and people can review shows badly – that’s something you have to live with – but to say people stormed out of the show was an absolute fabrication. Britney is aware of all this and she’s extremely upset by it. She’s a human being. I’m embarrassed, with such a big international entourage here with Britney, to be part of the Australian media when I see that kind of totally inaccurate reporting. It’s been all over the internet for nine months, the inference is that we tried to hide this. It’s been the opposite. The show is about an incredible spectacle, which it is.’’

Adam Leber later responded to this on his Twitter account saying, ‘’It’s unfortunate that one journalist in Perth didn’t enjoy the show last night. Fortunately the other 18,272 fans in attendance did.’’ Britney’s official website also posted a list of positive reviews from a number of fans. Burnswood Dome also issued a statement embarrassing Delvin, ‘Last night’s concert (Friday) saw a record crowd turn out for her performance in Pert and from Burnswood’s perspective the event was a huge success. Early media reports that hundreds of fans left the concert early cannot be substantiated and Burnswood has received no complaints about the concert.’’

Britney finally addressed the situation and according to BBC online, she was quoted saying, ‘’I hear there is a lot of controversy in the media about my show. Some reports have said they love it and some don’t. I came to Australia for my fans.’

During the tour, there was a rumour that the Vegas September 26, 2009 show would be recorded in 3D format for DVD. On November 12, 2009, Adam Leber dismissed reports stating on Twitter, ‘’No plans for a Circus DVD at the moment.’’ On June 26, 2012, Perez Hilton’s website claimed that a DVD would be released after an advert surfaced online. As he was part of the show, this gave many fans hope of a DVD, however, this never materialised.

Celebrate with us by watching the full show here: