Babylon Dubai – Newspaper Kommersant No. 11 (7456) of 01/23/2023
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The Atlantis The Royal opened in Dubai on Saturday night with a Beyoncé concert. In addition to celebrities from all over the world, the event was attended by the Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and his retinue. Frankly, I expected that this event, like a drop of water from the Persian Gulf, would reflect the secular way that was established in Dubai after the conditionally massive Russian relocation. I must say, it was reflected: it became quite obvious that Dubai is not some post-revolutionary Harbin or Constantinople, but another Babylon of a world scale. And its rulers expect that by 2030, 30 million tourists will visit the emirate annually. The Russian secular model on the same evening in Dubai was implemented at the birthday party of businessman Mikhail Barakin, known for planning to build the Zvezda shopping center in the Leningrad region together with Philip Kirkorov. In honor of the celebration at the Burj Al Arab, Ivan Urgant created a miniature model of his evening show, during which he spoke to the guests, including Mr. Kirkorov, about the birthday boy.
Model Kendall Jenner, Chairman of the Emirates Council of Women Entrepreneurs Fatima Al Awadhi, Huda Beauty owner Huda Kattan and Indian actor Aamir Khan, head of the American Forbes Travel Guide Hermann Elger, Swedish chef Bjorn Franzen, blogger Farhana waited patiently on the carpet. Body, ex-captain of the Ireland national football team Robbie Keane, Lady Amelia and Eliza Spencer, actress Katie Cassidy, African designer Rich Mnisi, TV presenter Ida Galich, singer Klava Koka, presenter Victoria Lopyreva (no other local Russians were seen), as well as influencers and athletes from almost all countries of the world. That is, it’s not that Russian relocators didn’t want to get here – in all local chats, the topic of “extra ticket” has been the hottest for the last three weeks. However, tickets did not exist in nature: all tested offers turned out to be fraudulent. The most realistic, from one of the concierge services, worth $150,000, no one encroached.
The previous project under the Atlantis brand – The Palm – opened in the fall of 2008. Then it also became an international event, but in the pre-Instagram era, the bet was made on movie and pop stars. Robert De Niro (he was also announced as one of the co-owners of the hotel), Charlize Theron, Lindsay Lohan, Mary-Kate Olsen, Mischa Barton, Ronnie Wood, Lily Allen, Janet Jackson, Natalie Imbruglia and others came. They had fun then, as they had fun in the 2000s, recklessly. The day after the gala opening, no one went under vitamin drips or to the gym, but as they were, not completely sober, they went to test the steep slides of the water park: miraculously there were no casualties. Kylie Minogue was invited as the headliner of the party, who gave a concert for $ 5 million – compared to Beyonce’s fee of $ 24 million, this amount seems modest. But the ideology of luxury in Dubai has changed a lot since then. In the fall of 2008, against the backdrop of the global financial crisis, the opening of an attraction hotel that became the epitome of the glamor of the 2000s, with the world’s largest aquarium, water park and the most expensive suite at that time, seemed like a huge boldness – many doubted whether it would take off. The opening of Atlantis The Royal comes at a time when the global recession is being shouted at every corner, but neither Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid nor the managing director of Atlantis hotels, Tim Kelly, who accompanied him, have any doubts about the success of the project, which has been built for ten years.
After all the guests had dined in numerous restaurants, everyone was invited to the stage above the large three-stage waterfall fountain. The guests were strictly warned about the ban on shooting – following the scandal with unauthorized photos from the concert in 2017, Beyoncé stopped giving concerts. But most of the guests of the evening gained fame and money thanks to the content in visually oriented social networks, the requirement could be considered utopian: only our Ida Galich did not take her phone out of her clutch.
The show was outstanding: it really costs a lot of money to put together this outside of a world tour. There was an orchestra, a choir, a dance troupe, water, flames, several floating platforms, an artist’s passage through the water, three changes of outfits, a nod to Arab culture, all the major hits, and soaring into the night sky at the end of the show. As a backdrop for the show, the motif of Raphael’s Vatican fresco “The School of Athens” was used, only instead of Plato, Socrates, Diogenes, Pythagoras, Alcibiades and the rest, dark-skinned men in ancient Greek clothes were depicted here. The sun shone in the center, against which the star of Beyoncé rose three times and once – her daughter Blue Ivy Carter. The whole family came to watch the show, including parents and husband. In a word, it was least of all like working out a corporate party with a minus phonogram from a flash drive: the performance, obviously, was significant not only for the customer, but also for the performer. Of course, then there were fireworks and dancing to the Swedish House Mafia trio.
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