Donald Glover has postponed the remaining North American dates of his final tour as Childish Gambino to “focus on my physical health.”
“Hey everyone,” he wrote on social media on Monday. “Unfortunately, I have to postpone the remainder of the North American tour to focus on my physical health for a few weeks. Hold on to your tickets. ALL tickets for the upcoming North American dates will remain valid if they are postponed. Thank you for the privacy. Thank you for the support. Thank you for the love.” No further details were given; a spokesperson for Glover did not immediately respond to diversityPlease provide further information.
At the time of Glover’s announcement, the North American tour still had a month left, with the next date scheduled for Tuesday in Austin, Texas. It then continued along the West Coast and Midwest before the final date in Chicago on October 3. The tour was scheduled to move overseas in November (first to Europe and then to New Zealand and Australia in January and February 2025), so it’s likely that the dates will be pushed back to next year.
The New World tour is part of Glover’s self-proclaimed “final” project under his Childish Gambino persona, and includes his latest album, the excellent Bando Stone and the New World, a forthcoming film of the same name, a re-release of his equally excellent 3.15.2020 album – which he rushed out in the early days of the pandemic but remixed, reworked and renamed Atavista – and, possibly most elaborate of all, this New World Tour, which utilized complex technology, lights, lasers and more.
Glover was in top form vocally and physically during the first of two nights of the tour in Brooklyn last month. The show is physically demanding, with the focus on Glover almost constantly for the entire 90 minutes, so any impairment would surely have an impact.
Due to the advanced technology, a postponement would be expensive. diversity wrote: “The technology for the show, designed by Tobias Rylander (Beyonce, 1975), is truly next-level – a performance in Connecticut over the weekend was canceled because the venue apparently couldn’t present it properly – and there were two stages and two tall vertical light towers at either end of the arena, as well as large cube-shaped video screens on either side of the stage and a long catwalk leading out into the audience; there was also a more conventional horizontal lighting rig and rows of laser lights that could individually pierce the air or shoot from one tower to another, forming vertical curtains of light. Most dazzling, above the end of the catwalk was a kind of giant crystal cloud made up of a few hundred icicle-like rods that lit up in synchronized sequences – and even showed a giant mosaic-like video of Glover’s face – and moved up and down throughout the show. The audience was warned both by a voice-over and later by Glover himself not to look directly into the lasers or ultra-bright lights.”
diversity We will keep you updated on the situation as it develops.
