Does Mary J. Blige have a pedometer? Just curious.

The singer, now 44, danced and patrolled the Grand Theater stage at Foxwoods Thursday night like a caffeinated panther, piling up at least few miles of roadwork — on stiletto heels, no less! — whilst entrancing and exhorting a near sellout crowd.

Blige, in fine voice and backed by a lockjaw-tight four-piece band and three background vocalists — all back-lined on risers like looming musical sentinels — presented a decades-spanning, 20-plus song show. With her hair in the signature blond bob, and relying on minimal costume changes from the “pop-star wardrobe trunk” construct, Blige was effortlessly hip.

Blasting out of the gates to lightning and thunder effects, the company roared through eight songs in flash-fire fashion, hits like “Just Fine,” “You Bring Me Joy,” “Real Love,” “Be Happy” and “Love is All We Need.” Fans swayed in time, standing and singing along with the passion of true believers.

For, indeed, Blige — a founding architect of rap-seasoned R&B — is, at this point in her life and career, far more than just an entertainer. To that end, after the opening musical blitzkrieg, the pacing and dynamics of the performance down-shifted to include several breaks wherein Blige, citing well-known autobiographical facts about her brutal upbringing and past troubles with alcohol, passionately spoke about women and their need for strength, perseverance, empowerment, survival and love.

Response — the audience was mostly women with a generous contingency of guys — was adoring in Friday-night-at-the-Chautauqua tent fashion, and I inferred a decided element of “Men, you’d better watch yourselves and treat us right” to the message. The momentum then shifted back into triumphant high gear for the finale stretch of career anthems “No More Drama,” “Be Without You” and “Family Affair.”

Curiously, while ticket-holders received digital download access to Blige’s very fine 2014 “The London Sessions” album, material from that work was mostly absent. Lighting for the show was cutting edge and heightened the experience, although images on the back-of-hall video screen — nature shots, rain-on-windows, the sort of flames footage you see in a fake fireplace — was reminiscent of long-ago PC screensavers in a Hallmark-y context. Hey, if at this point in life Blige is in a place that recalls the warm sentiments and security of a greeting card, more power to her.

The opening act was the very funny comedian Rob Stapleton. His short set focused a great deal on graphic pantomimes of sex, particularly a compare-and-contrast bit on black, white and Latina porn actresses. Given Blige’s themes of empowerment, Stapleton seemed an odd choice for the bill. That there were some children in the crowd was even more unsettling.

Blige and Stapleton return to the Grand Theater Sunday for a sold-out show.