The rumour mill is spinning over Celine Dion’s cancelled gig in Beijing. See if you can make sense of the competing theories offered. Us neither.
Concert organizers Ticketmaster whom you may remember from that little Bjork flap last month, have said that the Canadian superstar’s Beijing show has been “postponed for health reasons,” which makes it seem awfully strange that she has now scheduled a show in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for that same day. Meanwhile, the Beijing Evening News squashes the throat infection rumours, and quotes a Dion spokesman as saying that “the real reason for the cancellation was that the concert’s organizer ‘had sold more than 10,000 tickets, having not carried out the approval process.’”
Funny then that the Culture Ministry insists that the concert has already been approved. It’s possible that Emma Ticketmaster hastily put tickets on sale before the event had gained official approval, and though all the paperwork has now been signed and stamped, Celine’s well-oiled publicity machine is being extra-cautious following the Bjork brouhaha.
While the April 13 Beijing show has been cancelled, Celine’s April 11 tour date in Shanghai is still on. The pop diva will give her first ever performance on the Chinese mainland at the 50,000-seat Shanghai Stadium.