Australian super-songstress Kylie Minogue brings her musical extravaganza, KylieX2008, to Taipei’s Zhongshan Soccer Stadium (中山足球場) on Thursday. Tickets range in price from NT$1,500 to NT$6,000 and are available online at www.ticket.com.tw or by calling (02) 2341-9898.P>
KylieX2008 kicked off last May in Paris and has already traveled to more than 40 cities in Europe, South America and Asia. The “X” references the fact that this is the singer’s 10th concert tour, features 10 back-up dancers (and four acrobats) and is in support of her 10th album, titled (guess what?) X.
The tour’s production cost was a staggering US$16 million (about NT$514 million). It marks Minogue’s return to touring after defeating breast cancer in early 2006, and the singer has taken the opportunity to go all out for her fans. In previous media interviews, Minogue said that Freddie Mercury, the late Queen frontman, inspired her.
“I’m releasing my inner Freddie Mercury. It’s hard to explain but parts of the show are so over the top. When I sing Disco Needs You, it’s a real Freddie moment,” she told UK tabloid the Sun.
Minogue’s show features costumes designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier and is divided into seven acts, which Minogue has described as “shows within a show,” including the futuristic disco-themed opening act, Xlectro Static, in which Minogue has performed her addictive smash hit Can’t Get You Out of My Head at previous concerts. Another act is based on US high school pep rallies and has Minogue and her dancers in cheerleader outfits, while in yet another Minogue makes her grand entrance perched in a giant skull suspended above the stage while performing Like a Drug from her latest album.
Tickets for the singer’s initial run of concerts in the UK sold out within 30 minutes last December, and the enthusiastic response by fans on the tour’s European leg supported additional dates in South America, Asia and Australia. The success of KylieX2008 may be making up for Minogue’s reported disappointment over X’s relatively lackluster sales in the US (the tour currently has no stops scheduled in that country). The album, which the singer began working on towards the end of her cancer treatment in 2006, was a chart topper in Europe, Australia, the UK, Japan and Taiwan, but stalled at No. 139 on the US Billboard 200 despite good reviews for its electronica-tinged pop tracks.— CATHERINE SHU
Taiwan’s English education system is being pulled apart by three opposing forces. Bilingual Nation 2030 pulls students toward English and global communication. Artificial Intelligence (AI) readiness pulls them toward digital judgment, verification and AI-mediated work. But Taiwan’s old exam culture pulls them back toward memorization, grammar drills, timed reading and correct answers. If the education system keeps using old exams to define success, it risks producing graduates who are neither genuinely bilingual nor genuinely AI-ready, but trained for tasks machines can already perform. The first force is Bilingual Nation 2030. Launched in 2018, the policy aimed to “help Taiwan’s workforce connect
“Taiwan’s Opposition Leader Comes to US With a Message Straight Out of Beijing” read a May 31 headline in the Wall Street Journal. Top US administration officials and members of Congress almost certainly read the WSJ, and if there was a bullet point takeaway that people in Washington should absorb ahead of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chair Cheng Li-wun’s (鄭麗文) arrival in DC on June 9, that headline is it. The last few columns have discussed this very topic, and the timing is not coincidental. While those top officials likely do not read the Taipei Times, judging by the number
With weighty, anxiety-inducing geopolitical topics dominating the headlines, checking in on the wild and weird state of local politics can take some of the edge off. This November’s elections will determine who will be in charge of fixing potholes in your neighborhood, not the potholes in Taiwan’s complicated geopolitical space. Recently, after an online interview with a Taipei-based journalist, I commented that Taipei journalists never go further than the MRT can take them. He laughed and agreed. Naturally, the Taipei mayoral race is eating up much of the press attention. TAIPEI CITY Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Puma Shen (沈伯洋) has
As someone who normally steers clear of books with “transcendence” or “metaphysics” in their subtitles, this reviewer — a casual observer of local belief systems since the 1990s — found Fabian Graham’s Money God Temples in Taiwan a challenging read. Those who’ve only dipped their toes into temple culture will likely need to parse several sections with special care if they’re to keep up with the author, a British ethnographic researcher whose previous books have investigated religious practices among ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia. This scholarly volume examines a facet of Taiwan’s religious landscape that didn’t exist a century ago, and
RSS