Jennifer Lopez could take some charisma tips from Enrique Iglesias

RENE JOHNSTON/TORONTO STAR

Enrique Iglesias performs at the ACC in Toronto on Tuesday.

Jul 18, 2012

Its billed as a chummy co-headlining tour by two Latin-pop superstars, but youve gotta wonder how long it will take for this Jennifer Lopez/Enrique Iglesias road show to degenerate into a behind-the-scenes battle of egos between Diva and Heartthrob.

Maybe the degeneration has already begun. A mere three days after the joint J-Lo/E-Ig spectaculars debut in Montreal this past Saturday, the bill was subjected to an unexpected, last-minute flip for the first of its two Air Canada Centre stops on Tuesday night. Advertised opener Lopez didnt appear at the appointed hour, eventually replaced by descending video screens displaying the letters EI and then, nearly 60 minutes after her scheduled start time, by Enrique Iglesias himself. Dame Lopez didnt actually make it to the stage until around 10:15 p.m., which isnt particularly late by pop-music standards but not at all common in a venue thats typically beholden to a curfew of 11 unless Axl Rose or Prince is passing through town. Did someone have a hissy fit after reading the press from Montreal and demand to close the show? Did someone else then, in turn, have another hissy fit and refuse to go on before such-and-such an hour? I like to think so and, for the record, all of the above is pure, hopeful speculation just because thats the sort of show it was.

Jennifer Lopez seems like the sort to have hissy fits, anyway. Her tautly choreographed, gratuitously overappointed set on Tuesday was such a monument to unbridled narcissism that one genuinely feared for the lives of whoever was in charge of the single LED-lit step on her midstage catwalk that fell out of illuminated line with the rest for part of the night or the (ahem) gilded throne that rose from its trap door prior to On the Floor tilted at a precarious! , 75-deg ree angle towards stage right. Heads mustve rolled, man.

Ah, I kid. Maybe. Lopezs (drag) show was perfect for what it was, a theatrical, multi-costumed advertisement for the Vegas casino spectacle it ultimately revealed itself as aspiring to be when Lets Get Loud and Papi were garishly presented towards the end of the night before, yes, a casino backdrop.

Flanked by a dozen dancers 10 of them male and ripped in tacit, Kylie-esque acknowledgement of her enormous gay following Lopez descended from the ceiling in a shower of fireworks for Get Right at the dawn of her performance and proceeded to dance her heart out, occasionally singing, in a series of revealing, sequined outfits for 75 businesslike minutes that played up her Hollywood-fired star power while skilfully brushing aside her limited vocal capabilities and even more limited onstage charisma.

The big singles, from Love Dont Cost a Thing to Waiting for Tonight to an unplugged If You Had My Love, were represented and appreciatively applauded by the 15,000 mothers, daughters, mother-and-daughter combos and gaggles of giddy fellas in attendance. Really, though, no one was cheering for the tunes as pleasurable as some of them might be but for the sight and the presence of the vertically integrated entertainment product acting as a human vessel for their calculated perfection. Right? If it was about the music, after all, no one would be chatting around the water cooler this morning about the boxing match the J-Lo dancers staged in slow motion on the proscenium mid-set to remind us of that movie Enough but about how strong her voice sounded on umm well, she did get through If You Had My Love without a guide vocal.

You get what youre going in for, in any case. You really do. Even the entire Im just a simple girl from New York City charade perpetrated for Im Real and Jenny from the Block is excusable in its own, ludicrous context. You want nothing less than the absurd in these situations. Which is why you can stomach ! the 42-y ear-old Lopez repeatedly parading her 25-year-old boy-toy/tour choreographer Casper Smart before the crowd, but maybe why you dont necessarily want a treacly salute to Jennifer Lopezs greatness as a mother complete with a montage of her four-year-old twins like Until It Beats No More thrown in on top of all the other, overarching salutes to Jennifer Lopezs greatness. Keep it unreal. Humanity feels false.

Enrique Iglesias has a touch of the diva about him, too, but he camouflages it well.

Tuesday nights set marked the Spanish-born smoothies third Toronto appearance in 18 months and was arguably the reason so many misbehavin ladies of a broad range of postpubescent ages came out to the ACC on a school night to carry on like 11-year-olds gifted with front-row tickets to Justin Bieber. He invited the girls in my section to come dance at his feet at one point and I was, quite literally, knocked to the floor by a woman who could have been my mother as she hurtled towards the stage. Nuff said, I think.

Iglesiass set hit all the same marks as his last ACC gig: global mega-singles such as I Like How It Feels, I Like It, Dirty Dancer, Bailamos, Tonight (Im Lovin You) and a salsa-fied Rhythm Divine; graciously pulling fans of both homo- and heterosexual dispositions onstage for a personal serenade; and reminiscing about the year he spent recording his first album in Toronto at 18, albeit this time with Little India supplanting Chinatown as the neighbourhood in which he indulged in appropriate ethnic foods, watched a lot of porn and lost his virginity.

You can forgive Iglesias such Vegas-entertainer behaviour, however, because hes charming enough to sell it, in a self-aware manner that would make Neil Diamond proud. He tries very hard, in his standard ball cap, jeans and t-shirt attire, to present himself as Mr. Everyman while at the same time kinda-but-not-quite making a joke of his beefcake status. Somehow it works. Ive no idea how, but Lopez would do well to take some notes on charisma w! hile the yre on tour together.