Jolin: Dancing Diva Singapore Concert 2007
Singapore Indoor Stadium
The lights dimmed and the fans went wild as light sticks danced and screams rang out.
It didn’t take much to get the crowd going. And that was a good thing for Taiwanese singer Jolin Tsai.
The concert began dramatically as she was lifted up and then let back down gently, all the while striking nimble poses astride two rings.Dressed in a sparkling blue costume with a matching headpiece perched jauntily askew, she teased the crowd with slow, sensuous movements.
Then she launched into Pulchritude, the opening track of her latest album Dancing Diva, followed by Signature Pose and Mr Q. The three fast-paced songs gave her a chance to show off some slick moves and the enthusiastic crowd lapped them up.
In keeping with her sexy dancing queen image, her costumes were figure-hugging affairs which flaunted her curves. Twice, she removed an outer robe to reveal a skimpier ensemble underneath.
Tsai, 26, has also built an impressive body of hits over the past four years,and the two-hour concert was packed with memorable songs from her last four albums.
It quickly became clear, however, that she was not quite up to the mark in the vocals department. She was drowned out at points when it came to the lower registers and strained at others which called for high notes.
She did herself no favours by covering pop diva Faye Wong’s Reminiscence, her sometimes shaky rendition paling in comparison to the latter’s pristine crooning.
Even the dance moves failed to impress after a while. Mostly, they saw her twirling her hands about and shaking her hips. Often, she seemed too busy going through the motions to really cut loose.
You wonder what The Dance Floor judges would have made of her performance.
She admitted to the capacity crowd of about 9,000 that she was a little nervous as her previous stop on her current world tour was some time ago. But the four-month break since her concert in Malaysia was no excuse for the amateurish cartwheels that she attempted or the graceless fumbling with a rubber ball during the encore number, Dancing Diva.
None of this mattered to her fans, however, who responded to her every gesture with shrieks of approval. Lyrics were flashed on the two screens flanking the stage and the audience was happy to sing along, karaoke-style.
The crowd also took to her coy banter.“I was here 21/2 years ago. Have I changed? Have I become prettier?” she asked,and was rewarded with a resounding “yes”.
As the show drew to an end, Tsai told her adoring fans that their “performance here has left a deep impression on me”. The feeling was clearly mutual.
(ST)