Shakira’s Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran tour has taken more than $150m in ticket sales
Deep in the bowels of Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium, a note is taped to the door of Shakira’s production office. “Please come back later… unless you’re actually on fire.”
The handwritten pink scrawl suggests a level of stress that is entirely understandable for the team putting on the biggest stadium tour of the year.
With 64 sold out shows across North and South America, Shakira has played to more than two million fans.
“I’ve worked for over a year, polishing every single detail of the show, so this is really an amazing reward,” the star tells BBC News.
There are no frayed nerves or screaming matches backstage before the Miami show… and no-one’s on fire.
The vibe is calm and professional. Dancers stretch in the corridors, seamstresses sew crystals onto catsuits, and guitar techs check and re-check their tunings.
Hang around long enough and you discover a few surprising tour facts.
“We travel with two washing machines and two tumble dryers, which we plumb in [at] every venue,” says head of wardrobe Hannah Kinkade, who has a mere 300 costumes to care for.
Every outfit has to be refreshed before a new show, she says, because “Shakira dances really hard and the dancers do as well.
“The male dancers scuff their shoes so badly that we have to repaint them every morning.”
Birmingham-born stage manager Kevin Rowe shows us around the dark corridors beneath the stage, where the crew have stashed secret reserves of Gatorade and iced coffee to help them survive the sticky Miami heat.
“It either gets very hot or very wet,” he says of working on an outdoor show. “But that’s the trade-off of living in the underworld.”
All the sets are stashed away under the stage, and lifted into place on elevators at different times during the show. Shakira’s shoes are already in place on this studded-crystal staircase, waiting for her costume change
At about 2:30pm, the band start their sound check. Shortly after 3pm, Shakira herself arrives with her non-deceitful hips, flanked by a police escort, and joins the team on stage.
Dressed in flared silver jeans and a white vest top, she can’t help dancing as she assesses tonight’s venue.
“I came here for the Beyoncé concert and that was flawless, so you’d better make me sound like that,” she jokes to the crew.
Or is it a joke?
Shakira delivers the quip with a wink, but there’s one thing everyone acknowledges backstage: The boss is a perfectionist.
“When she’s on, she’s on,” says chief dancer Darina Littleton. “When she comes in, she’s ready, her character’s on, she’s full out.”
“She knows what she wants, and if she can’t figure it out she’ll get there one way or another,” says musical director Tim Mitchell, who’s been playing with Shakira since the 1990s (he even wrote the pan pipe riff on Whenever, Wherever).
“She’s very particular about every aspect of the show: Sound, visual, lighting, the wristbands, every single thing. It’s incredible. I don’t know how she does it.”
