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Gig Review: Pink @ Forsyth Barr Stadium, Dunedin - 01/09/2018

02 Sep 2018 // A review by jacquiew

Pink took Dunedin to heaven tonight, figuratively and literally, with a stellar performance featuring acrobatics, mesmerising dance, theatre, and powerhouse vocals.

The crowd came ready for a good time and when Pink took to the stage slightly after 9pm she declared her intention (following a tongue in cheek fanfare on solo recorder) with Get The Party Started, the star herself swinging from a giant chandelier in a black sequined one-piece suit and singing while hanging upside down. What a way to start a show!

Beautiful Trauma followed and the crowd supported in full voice. Pink's sheer joy and generosity of spirit was clear as she and the show's cast of musicians and dancers slickly negotiated scene and costume changes, never missing a beat. It was a delight to witness such a slick, professional production.

Humour also featured strongly, especially during the staging of Revenge, complete with a giant inflatable effigy of Eminem which Pink literally took revenge on leaping to the height of the effigy's face on wires to deliver a knockout blow to its face.

Working the nearly 40,000 strong crowd was effortless for Pink, she even picked up a fan's phone at one point and took a selfie for them without missing a note.

Her cover of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit lifted the roof of the stadium and her beautiful, poetic high wire performance during Secrets was simply extraordinary.

Try was a massive crowd pleaser and the hits kept coming with Just Like Fire and What About Us? demonstrating Pink's remarkable vocal power.

More than that, What About Us? was a rallying cry. "I have to believe change is possible," said Pink in the accompanying video clip, and so indeed do we all.

Moving down the front stage apron with members of the band brought an intimacy to the next group of songs, a quality that's difficult to achieve in a stadium setting. Barbies was a delight with cello and upright bass adding to the pathos of this evocative song.

It was I Am Here that really brought the house to its knees with its clarion call of survival. "I've already seen the bottom so there's nothing to fear," sings Pink. And in singing from that place of knowledge of despair she took the audience to the very heights and gave us all hope that we too can transcend fear and despair.

Her anthem-like songs Perfect and Raise Your Glass had everyone enthralled. A particularly lovely moment followed the sharing of the audio of the speech Pink made about her daughter at the VMAs last year when her daughter herself came onto the stage for a hug with her mother (as part of Pink's introductions of the dancers in the show).

By now we were all a little dizzy with delight at the sheer intensity of the show, as was Pink after some particularly intense aerial spinning introducing Blow Me (One Last Kiss). Petals were scattered over the audience and it felt like an ending, but wait there was more, and not just another powerful hit but the jaw dropping spectacle of the singer catapulting through the air all around the stadium on wires while singing So What. It was the most remarkable thing I have ever seen at a concert.

And finally, to finish, a quick change to jeans and a t-shirt and the sweet goodbye of Glitter In The Air which ends with the question "have you ever held your breath and asked yourself will it ever get better than tonight?" Yes Pink, that's what I and more than 37,000 other people did at your concert tonight. You gave us a truly remarkable, heartfelt, and committed performance. Will it ever get better than that? I very much doubt it could. Brava.


Review written by Jacquie Walters

 

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