First came the cellos. Then came the twerking.
Erykah Badu wasn't about to let the Dallas Symphony Orchestra cramp her delightfully offbeat style Friday night at the Meyerson Symphony Center. But the results were so uneven, you almost wished she had.
During the concert, the first performance Badu and the orchestra have ever held together, the singer did make at least one concession to DSO protocol: She took the stage at 7:45 p.m., an unusually early start time given that she often begins her shows late and sings into the wee hours. Some fans were so confused, they didn't arrive until the two-hour event was nearing its end.
Audience members dressed in tuxedos, jean shorts and everything in between. They kept their smartphones in their pockets, along with their weed; it was the first smoke-free Badu show in recent memory. Sober fans settled for hallucinatory computer-generated images that flickered on a screen above the orchestra.
Ah yes, the orchestra — ostensibly half the reason for this one-of-kind show. Every now and then, the pairing jelled.
When Badu's seven-piece electric band went silent and the singer began to soar, the orchestra embraced her perfectly. At other times, the DSO set up Badu's idiosyncratic songs with seamless introductions.
Yet most of the time, you simply couldn't hear the orchestra over the roar of Badu's electric bassist, drummer and drum machine. Paring down her band to, say, an acoustic bassist and electric keyboardist might have allowed things to work beautifully. As configured last night, however, the concert was doomed to fail.
Badu herself acknowledged she's no ideal frontwoman for an orchestra. "It's quite a challenge because they're following sheet music, but I can't really read music," she said.
As a result, the orchestra performed sparingly. Conductor Ted Hearne had the musicians play on only a half-dozen tunes, including Badu's 1997 hit "On & On" and her version of Todd Rundgren's "Hello It's Me." The DSO sat silently during long stretches of the show before bidding farewell and leaving Badu and her band to finish the last third of the concert on their own. With the orchestra gone, fans finally stood up and danced.
Badu herself danced up a storm, spinning like a dervish in her full-length yellow dress coat and twerking 'till her gluteus got sore. And while she had many kind words for Hearne and the orchestra, she also teased the DSO from time to time.
When her between-song banter veered toward salty waters, she said "They're takin' off $100 every time I curse." Later, when someone in the crowd yelled out that ticket prices were too high, Badu responded with a flurry of comic dancing.
She was just having fun, perhaps. But it was one more sign that, as an artist, Badu is most comfortable on her own turf, playing by her own set of rules.
Thor Christensen is a Dallas writer and critic. Email him at thorchris2@yahoo.com.