Just when we all thought Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour couldn’t get any more mind-blowing, her set designer has shared just how the impressive production came together.
The spectacular set of shows, which kicked off in Sweden earlier this month, are already sending social media into a frenzy, with the Break My Soul hitmaker delighting fans by inviting her daughter Blue out on stage in recent days.
But now an eye-opening Instagram post from Beyoncé’s set designer Es Delvin has given the worldwide tour a whole new meaning.
The artist shared enlightening insight into the creation of the Renaissance tour set design, revealing that a creative team spent almost two years transforming Beyoncé’s poetry into art.
And if you haven’t seen pictures already, the stage itself is pretty inspiring, boasting a giant screen containing a large “portal” right in the centre.
Taking to the social media app, Es shared sketches coming to life, showing how ideas on paper came to life.
Captioning the post, she wrote: “Beyoncé’s LA studio reminds me of Andy Warhol’s Factory: her endlessly curious creative team, Parkwood, are there all year round, helping Beyoncé to translate her poetry and scripts into films and artworks.
“We had meetings at the studio and on zoom between September 2021 and March 2023 – constantly sketching the evolving ideas for the Renaissance Tour."
“As Beyoncé read her poetic lockdown film scripts to us, the show’s three-hour, six-act structure began to emerge,” she continued.
Es explained that Beyoncé’s range of references are broad and include “redlining” – which is the denial of loans and mortgages in Black residential areas – reclamation of rodeo culture for Black Americans and the echo chambers of surveillance capitalism.
She revealed that those three themes were “all shot through with the silver-sequinned joy, liberty and luminosity of LGBTQ+ Ball culture”.
Concluding the post, Es added: “Working closely with the architects from Stufish, we envisaged a stadium sized ‘film with a hole’.
“Ed Burke and Andrew Makadsi from Beyoncé’s Parkwood team curated the vast perforated LED sculpture into a euphoric three-hour kinetic painting made of light, Fatima Robinson directed the choreography, James Merryman the cameras, and Tobias Rylander the light.”
Es’s work on the Renaissance tour has been branded “out of this planet” and “genius” by mind-blown fans.
“As an architect I’m in awe of the design’s fruition and the hard work that must’ve gone on behind the scenes,” another said. “I love how it seamlessly blends into the crowd and not isolate the performer from the audience. Easily one of the best stage designs of all time!’
This isn’t the first time Es has worked with Beyoncé either, having previously designed the set for the record-breaking Grammy winner’s Formation stadium tour back in 2016.
Es has helped a plethora of huge names bring their stage shows to life, including the likes of Adele, The Weeknd and Lady Gaga.
Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour is currently on its five-date London leg, with the whole of June dedicated to European dates.
The tour will run until September, with New Orleans marking the closing concert.