I guess seeing David Byrne don a white tutu for his encore performance of “Burning Down the House” at Radio City Music Hall last night could have been expected. (Actually it should have been expected, since our friend Annie-B Parson, who choreographed the show, warned us about it; I just forgot.) I always thought that Talking Heads‘ song was about nonconformity, or maybe just the dangers of living the expected life (“I don’t know what you expect staring into the TV set/Fight fire with fire”), and nothing says nonconformity like a grown man wearing a tutu. 

A white tutu, mind you, over his nice white suit, which went nicely with his white man-from-Glad hair. The band was dressed all in white, too — like sous chefs, one critic said (though I found the effect more evocative of the laboratory) and sure enough, Byrne began the evening in low-key fashion, walking us through “the menu”: We would start with some samplings from his new collaboration with Brian Eno, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today; a number from their first album, My Life In the Bush of Ghosts; at least one song from his solo effort, The Catherine Wheel; and a hefty dose of ditties from the Heads albums produced by Eno. 

The latter were the biggest crowd pleasers, of course,  though some of my favorite moments came when the dancers (also clad in white) added hula-like hand movements to new songs like “One Fine Day” and “Everything That Happens.” Byrne always seemed to be sending semaphore signals to us through his music, from the darkest period of the eighties (“Our president’s crazy/Did you hear what he said?”) to these equally economically troubled, yet politically promising, times. 

“When the seasons start to slip/when the tight rope walker slips/I’m counting on the possibilities,” he warbled in his weird burr on “Big Nurse” and his optimism was contagious, as was his nonconformity. Did I mention that, at the end of the show, everyone was wearing a tutu?