This Sunday (September 6) marks the 25th anniversary of one of the most iconic pop performances of all time: Britney Spears performing “I’m a Slave 4 U” live at the 2001 MTV VMAs. Opening with a then-at-the-height-of-her-career Spears locked in a cage alongside a live tiger and climaxing with her dancing around the stage with a live python draped across her shoulders, the performance has been endlessly referenced in the years since. At Coachella 2025, Tyla sparked comparisons with her green bra and tiny denim shorts – though she denied the look was inspired by Spears – while Megan Thee Stallion recreated the moment more explicitly at the 2024 VMAs, live python included. A quarter of a century on, Spears’ performance is still yet to be topped – and, according to veteran stage designer Ray Winkler, perhaps never will be.

CEO and design director of entertainment architecture company STUFISH, Ray Winkler’s CV reads like a Hall of Fame of iconic stages, spanning everything from the Rolling Stones and the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony to Beyoncé, Sabrina Carpenter and even Justin Bieber’s 2026 Coachella performance. Long before many of these shows, however, Winkler and STUFISH were brought in by MTV to help realise Spears’ vision for launching her then-unreleased single “I’m a Slave 4 U” in a “jungle setting with a twist”.

“There was a lot of Britney in the show – she knew exactly what she wanted,” recalls Winkler of designing the iconic stage, later describing the superstar as “a very, very friendly person who exuded warmth” and “absolutely delightful”. “The initial exotic animal idea came from Wade Robson, who was Britney’s choreographer and creative director at the time, and her record label. We weren’t privy to that initial conversation – we were brought in by MTV at a slightly later stage to realise the concept into a set design. We wanted to create our own version of it in gold, silver, and bronze. The cage and tree were all rendered in brushed aluminium.” 

Despite backlash from animal rights group PETA at the time, Winkler says animal welfare was taken seriously throughout the performance. “There was always a high level of awareness around animal safety and from what I witnessed, these animals were very, very well taken care of,” he recalls, adding that the tiger was “not very hungry”. “Their care before, during and after the show was a high priority for Britney, for the team and everybody at MTV.”

That emphasis on animal welfare mattered all the more because, according to Winkler, the live animals were central to what made the performance so memorable. “The greatest performances tend to distil a single picture, and Britney with the snake is one of them,” he explains. “This was before the era of giant video screens; everything the audience saw was there – it was entirely physical. There’s a liveness to that which you simply can’t fake, and I think people still feel that 25 years later.”

More recently, however, Winkler and STUFISH worked with another pop queen: Madonna, for the 2026 World Cup final halftime show. Given Madonna’s return to large-scale live performance – and the enduring fascination around what she might do next – it begs the question: could Winkler and STUFISH be cooking up another performance for the ages?

His response is diplomatic: “We never discuss which artists we may or may not be working with, sorry, that’s their news to share.” Fair play, Ray, but we’re choosing to take that as a yes.

 Check out the gallery above for original sketches of the iconic stage, as well as a selection of other performances STUFISH have produced.