Long before a bejewelled Taylor Swift was filling stadiums, crowds gathered to see women in rhinestones and plumes adorning the stage. From Josephine Baker dancing in a banana skirt in 1920s Paris, to the Ziegfeld Follies chorus lines that defined Broadway glamour, the showgirl was the original pop star — part icon, part myth, all sequined spectacle.

Hot off the heels of her record-breaking global Eras tour , a production as precise as it was transcendent, Taylor has proved she isn't merely capable of mounting the kind of grand spectacle that once belonged to the great showgirls of the past. She eclipses them. Where the Ziegfeld girls shimmered behind the footlights, Taylor commands stadiums with a gilded wink and a novelist's sense of narrative; she doesn't just step into the lineage

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