At a Kylie Minogue gig last Friday, the man next to me spent the entire show filming her in close-up. This unsettling behaviour leaves women – artists and audience alike – feeling surveilledKylie Minogue’s current Tension tour is a glorious spectacle. Dancers prowl around geometric staircases in weird hats, which feels delightfully Pet Shop Boys. There is a disco ball big enough to permanently dazzle every audience member. One visual shows a noirish film of Ms Minogue as a sort of heartbreak-vanquishing detective; a billboard in her rainy street scene incorporates the location of each tour date to ask: “Feeling lonely in Sheffield? Call Kylie …” And there she is in the middle of it all, resplendent in blue PVC; a spangly red jumpsuit; a kaftan-ish thing sewn together from what looks like neon police tape, emblazoned with the classic jagged Kylie heartbeat monitor logo.Kylie is one of our most generous performers: not above adding The Loco-Motion to the setlist following audience demand, its youthful silliness contrasted with Dancing, a gorgeous disco-country song about mortality. The expansiveness of the show made it all the more galling to be forced to partially witness it through the digital camera of the man sitting next to me, who spent the entire gig – and I mean every single second of it – training his priapic lens on Kylie through wobbly 10x zoom. Continue reading...