Talented choreographer Alex Magno is back on MadonnaTribe for another interesting chat about the making of Madonna's Drowned World Tour from 2001. With 2006 marking the fifth anniversary of that one of a kind tour, we chat with Mr Magno about how he got to work on his second Madonna tour and the great ideas and choreographies that were put together with for this show, including never before heard details about the deleted number "I Want You".

AM: No Japan in the middle (laughs), it was the perfect timing, the stars and the moon everything seemed to be in the right place. I was giving then a set of numbers to coreograph by Jamie and Madonna.
I was very I happy I was giving "Frozen" but the first number I started working on, believe it or not, was "Nobody's Pperfect".
I worked with my assistent, her being Madonna and I was being her dancer.
Actually Madonna and the band were rehearsing the opening number of the tour on the side, so I went to the corner of the studio, got some mirrors and sort of created my own private room and got a little boom box, cause I wasn't going to wait for my time, I know how Madonna is and I want to be head not behind. I could wait for my time but I said, no, I want to be ahead because that's going to help it.

MT: Yeah I completely iunderstand that.

AM: So I stared choreographing "Nobody's Perfect" and at the end of the day I had a number done. I showed it to the director and then to Madonna and she loved it saying: "Tomorrow I wanna learn it". So we had to pick a dancer among the male dancers and we sort of "auditioned" them because we needed to pick the best one for this huge role. It was the role of a leading man for Madonna and she had to be comfortable with him, kiss him and have sort of a vibe together.

So Nito was the most capable because of his huge experience in martial arts but he is also a street dancer so he walked like a hip hop dancer would instead of walking like a Samurai. So it took a while to work with him in a theatrical way to get him away from that and trying to get him in a more Japanese samurai attitude. He was the one that was the most comfortable with the sword and the only problem was the height. He was a little bit short so we gave him some really high boots and he looked amazing. It was amazing the way the number turned out. He was the perfect match with Madonna and they were perfect for each other in that number. And that was my first number.

MT: On what other Drowned World Tour numbers did you work on?

AM: After "Nobody's Perfect", the second one I did was "Frozen". Which also was one an amazing experience because that's one of my favourite Madonna songs ever.
When I first heard "Frozen" I was speechless. The imagery, the sound. It was so rich. It made me excited about where Madonna was going, like soundwise and theatrically and that's when I got excited about the possibility of working with her again so when they gave "Frozen" to me I was so blessed. I was so happy I had that gift. That's the best gift you can give a choreographer, a music like that with so many layers and so rich in rhythm, melody and the poetry of the lyrics.
I was in heaven working with that piece.

MT: That is also one of my favourite ones...

AM: And then "Sky Fits Heaven" was a collaboration of 4 different choreographers including myself because you can see how huge that number was. It took two weeks to do it while normally a number takes you two days, but Madonna had to fly and she had to be coached.
We had to choreograph the people that lifted the ropes.
Everything was done organically and everything had to be perfectly timed. There was no space for a mistake. It was done by manpower so that made the stakes even higher. There was so many things happening at the same time on top of the video that was so overwhelming. So it had to had more than one person to choreograph it.
Then I did "La Isla Bonita". Madonna wanted it to have a sort of "Evita" look.

Basically the show was broken into 3 segments. The first one was the Rock 'n' Roll one. In that segment I did "Candy Perfume Girl" and "Beautiful Stranger".
In the Gheisha segment I did "Frozen", parts of "Sky Fits Heaven". I did the whole "What It Feels Like For A Girl" choreography. I did "Open Your Heart" and "Nobody's Perfect". And of course all this is a collaboration with the director and Madonna in terms of what they want.

MT: Did you have immediately the feeling this show was going to be different from other ones?
Everyone refers to it as dark, but it's even more than that...

AM: I think it's avantgarde. It's interesting. Madonna was very daring to do a tour with a set list of songs, with the exception of "Holiday", "La Isla Bonita" and maybe "Music", that people didn't know.
Her fans knew them but they weren't her top popular songs. But this is the power of an artist that says: You know what? I'm going to give light to these songs and I will do it by giving them a visual re-birth".

MT: Yes, that was really cool...

AM: Madonna came up with the concept and came up with things that fit the songs and that made people understand the music, because I think people didn't understand some of the songs.
You could have only understand the music after you saw the images and the performance. It gave a whole new meaning to the song. And then boom, people got it and went out buying the cd. She is also an amazing business woman. I don't think she calculated that but that's what happened. And besides that she was like: "I'm not going to be set on trends, I'm going to make this work and people will follow me".

That's what she did.

Everybody was like: "it's so dark". But if there's one person who can do it and can get away with it is Madonna. Any other artist would probably fell miserably but Madonna was able to make a success out of it.

It was a success in all ways, not only artistically but economically even if it's the most avantgarde and edgy compared to her other shows. It's dark but it's a different dark from "The Beast Within" from The Girlie Show, or "Sex".
The Girlie Show had a dark side to it but this was different because you couldn't define the darkness of Drowned World and for the lack of words the only definition that comes to mind is avant guard. It's so like art theatre.

MT: And it was also reflecting the new Madonna she became.

AM: Yes, that's the profound Madonna, the mother, the Golden Globe winner for "Evita", she learned how to play guitar. She was really a completely different person from the previous tour and the show reflected that. And speaking about "Evita", I loved choregraphing the tango piece on "Don't Cry For Me Argentina". It was a dance break and the dancers were breathless there.

MT: Is there any number from Drowned World tour that originally had choreographies or ideas, that did not end up in the final show?

AM: Yes (Laughs). In "Candy Perfume Girl" my original idea was to have this crazy guy, this menacing character, played by Anthony the dancer, to have broken dolls, pieces of dolls, heads, legs, inside of his backpack. He was sort of a doll maker and as he turns the heads of the dolls, Tamara, the female dancer of the number would turn her head or would contorse sort of like Tamara and the doll are the same. I wanted to put him on a moving platform where he first assembles the doll and then the platform would start moving closer to where Tamara is on stage. He would drop the doll and go where Tamara is and kill her. So it was a concept about a crazy killer that stalks strippers. When we showed to Madonna she freaked out (Laughs).

MT: Really?

AM: Yes, well the prop guy instead of giving me a doll with no face, he gave me a doll that looked like a three year old girl. But Madonna wanted to see it and I told her that it was not the right prop and it wasn't going to look right. But she insisted.
So I played Anthony and I just showed roughly what he would be doing. When I showed it to her she freaked out because she is a mum and told me I was a pervert (laughs). It was funny and everybody laughed and made fun of me. And it obviously didn't end up in the tour but nevertheless the idea is still there as we were able to use some of the stuff, like the backpack, the glove, etc.

MT: Was Madonna different during Drowned World Tour rehearsals? She was indeed a mother this time.

AM: For this tour she was very in touch with people's emotions and feelings. Still very perfectionist and hard worker but much more nurturing. She was a mum and a wife. She was split between her family and the musicians so we didn't have Madonna as much as in the Girlie Show.

We had a limited time with Madonna. So we have to use her time the best way. Kelly, my assistent would play her part and then Jamie King would be there to watch and make sure everything was working according to Madonna's notes. Then Madonna would come in and say what she didn't like and what had to be changed.

MT: Did you happen to work on songs that were never used in the final set list? It has happened in other tours...

AM: Yes, actually the was one song that they wanted me to choreograph and that didn't make the final show.
It was "I Want You".
Madonna was supposed to wear this beautiful dress and she was supposed to be on a stage that moved over the audience and they took the idea out because it was going to cost too much money and she was going to loose a big part of the audience so they cut that out.
It was going to be a really beautiful, statuesque number, with limited amount of movement but very grand, beautiful movement with a wind machine blowing.
It was really a great concept.

MT: Well in a way it reminds of the "Lo Que Siente La Mujer" number...

AM: Oh there's an interesting story about that too.
They gave me the music one night and they said "it must be done for tomorrow". They gave me the cd with the Calderone remix which is in English. So the original piece I choreographed was done using the English version, they didn't have the Spanish version yet.

I was told Madonna wanted it to be a hot number with all the girls and herself.
I've been explained that they had this huge set opening up like a flower. They gave me a mock up to work with and so I went to the Sony studios in the middle of the night and brought in five of my dancers, not from the tour, and my assistant to play the parts. So we worked till 3 o'clock in morning. Then at 10 o'clock we showed the choreography to Jamie. He liked it and then I started teaching the dancers. Then Madonna came in to watch and she was like: NO WAY!

The number was amazing but she didn't want anything like that. "I don't want my girls to look like hookers".
She just didn't want that vision she said: "I did that already and I want something else".

So that's how the girls ended up being more "boy-like". We changed it and made everything more statuesque, more posing. So that's what the number ended up being. Originally it was 300% much more dance and movement than what we did but I actually like the final version better.

MT: That was awesome really...

AM: I actually like what it ended up being and this shows that Madonna knows what she's talking about. It could go wrong but actually it ended up being one of the best numbers because it brings the audience closer. That whole act is a lot intimate. I come from Brazil and back there we do jam sessions everywhere, in the family we play drums with the table or play whatever you have in the house and people dance in the middle.

When we talked about ideas for "La Isla Bonita" I played for the percussionist something like that, to make it look sort of MTV unplugged, the musicians come around, something that breaks the rules and brings the audience closer to them. And they liked the idea and they went for that. And for "La Isla Bonita", Anthony ended up being the only person dancing but originally I wanted to have other dancers also. But again Madonna was highlighting each dancer and if you remember, each of them had a solo.
Pretty much in Drowned World Tour each dancer had a moment in which they were in the spotlight.

MT: And what about Donna and Nikki, you already worked with them in the Girlie Show.

AM: Oh Nikki and Donna, they were really great. They were wonderful.

MT: And you worked with Donna DeLory on her video "Just A Dream"...

AM: You are right, my relationship with Donna came before I worked with Madonna on the Girlie tour. It's interesting because I did the music video with Donna prior to working with Madonna, so when Madonna mentioned my name to the dancers and to Donna, she already knew who I was and said: "Oh yes Alex he's great" (Laughs).
She used to train with me and I choreographed her music video for her single "Just A Dream". We shot it in Australia for a week and I brought in two dancers. It was a great music video, just the three of them on the beach, in the sand. It was really gorgeous. So I know Donna for a long time.

I didn't meet Nikki until I worked on the Girlie Tour and I was really happy to see them again on the Drowned World Tour. I just feel that they are like the strong pole for Madonna. They serve as a great supporters for her, emotionally, artistically and I feel that the show sort of loses its essence when they are not there. Not Madonna, because she CAN hold the stage by herself, she doesn't need anybody else but the show does lose if they are not there, in the sense they that they are so much part of Madonna's career, professionally speaking, that if they are not there something is missing and you really miss them.

MT: Well they were also a sort of tie between Madonna and the fans during the tours.

AM: Yes absolutely.

AM: Well, once you work with Madonna herself it has a huge impact in your life. It really changes your prospect of working with people and your prospect of dealing with pressure. It just changes you. It just makes you a better artist in the long run.
That's what happens.
In the outcome of those two tours that I done with Madonna this is what I learned. First of all to push the envelope, to be unique and to work under pressure above all. Not because she is Madonna, you put that in yourself too. You want to do the work that levels the star, the muse and that's not an easy thing to do. She has done everything and it's then hard for you to come up with something unique that has not been done and that fits her.

There are days that you don't like but there is always the next day, the sun is always going to rise the next day. So if you keep that in mind and you don't let a bad day destroy the rest of your life then you'll be fine, working with her or with any other artist. So basically that's what I learned from her, that's what she taught me in the long run.

MT: Alex, it was a pleasure to have you here at MadonnaTribe to talk about these great Madonna tours. Thanks a lot.

AM: Thanks to you for having me, it's been great.