Twas a JLo good show

NICE, FIRM Jennifer Lopez, still curvy after all these years, as we saw last week. Photo by Magic Liwanag

MANILA, Philippines - Much virtual and literal ink has been spent singing the praises of the Philippine stop of Jennifer Lopezs Dance Again World Tour, which was held last November 26 at Pasay Citys Mall of Asia Arena.

The afterthoughts have ranged from citing the merits of the show and its star, to a stargazing enumeration of the celebrity attendees.

Considering the largeness of the event from Lopezs global celebrity and fiery talent, the huge number of spectators (at least 10,000 packing over 90% of the coliseum-like Arena), the grandiose lighting and other visual effects, the deafening loudness of the live and pre-recorded music, to the bevy of sponsorships led by Sen. Manny Villar and familys Vista Land that helped cover the gigs tab this JLo show could indeed be the biggest concert in the country this year.

There seems to have been a lack of emphasis, however, on the emotional bigness of the gig, which I shall get to in a bit.

Same shows, different destinations

HOWDY, MAAM. Jennifer Lopez makes a glamorous, Old Hollywood entrance. Photo by Magic Liwanag

Her Dance Again World Tour not only marks Lopezs first time to be on our shores.

It also marks her first time to conquer the world physically, performing in one country and continent after another since the tours kickoff in Panama last June 14 until its projected end in Puerto Rico before Christmas Day 2012.

Of course, Lopez has long been a global entertainment fixture for over two decades now, with a large filmography and discography, and a TV career that spans her fledgling In Living Color start to her two-season stint as an American Idol judge making her one of the most prominent people on Earth.

Yet she has never been able to go on a full-fledged world tour until now.

Per various sources online, the tours shows appear to be plakado, as in the setlist, script and surprises are the same everywhere she lands all part of a grand design long planned out well before the JLo crew set out of North America to get their party started last June in Central America.

So no matter the destination, the Dance Again shows (also reportedly being filmed in certain stops as a future 3D movie) have a fixed sequence:

1) First is a 5-song Old Hollywood Glamour segment that concludes with her 2000-ushering Waiting for Tonight;

2) Next is a segue into a Back to the Bronx portion that climaxes with Jenny from the Block;

3) Then its a Funk & Love sojourn that kicks off with an updated video of Baby I Love U (past video costar: fellow actor and then-beau Ben Affleck; video costar now: BF and fellow dancer Casper Smart);

4) The main finale, the Party section, bookended by Lets Get Loud and On the Floor;

5) The encore, now an obligatory concert staple, featuring her newest preordained hit Dance Again.

Adding to the visual razzmatazz was a widescreen backdrop, which played ! videos re! lative to the song at hand and themselves notable for their editing.

That is, JLo only appears in a given video if shes not onstage; if a number at the moment is a duet say Im Real with an absent Ja Rule or Dance Again with a prerecorded Pitbull the unraveling video is sans JLo, even if the tunes original music videos do feature her.

Given the Dance Again concerts pre-programmed predictability, it is quite up to the audience to prevent ennui from setting in on the performers. Yet conversely, viewers would not be chanting and dancing if JLo wasnt such a motivational performer.

Booty and the beast

CROWDED HOUSE. J.Lo packed the MOA Arena with spectators across generations. Photo by Myles Sulat

JLo didnt come up onstage until around 9 pm but the MOA Arena sound system got an early workout via two batches of opening acts, which included the hiphop dance troupe Philippine All-Stars, and the song-and-dance sets by Mica Javier and G-Force and rapper-model-actor Jay-R.

If anything, the pre-JLo performers were a poignant reminder that Lopez had been in their more-neophyte shoes before, while the audiences courteous applause and random shouts were a rousing reminder that its Lopez whom we yearned to see and hear.

Once the main show got going (at 9 pm and ending at almost 11 pm), pretty much everyone else onstage the 6-member band and the male and female dancers who made things look like chaste Striptease or Magic Mike outtakes was an all-out yet anonymous supporting player in the presence of this big J.

And Lopez sure was a radiant presence in her every seco! nd onstag! e, thanks to an array of tricks up her absent sleeves.

There was her variety of furious, near-beastly dance moves that might make Madonnas eyebrows furrow.

There were here body-flaunting costumes as conceived by Lebanese designer Zuhair Murad that might make Alma Moreno don her tanga from Loveliness anew.

Theres Lopezs okay voice that can relatively aim high, though not in the glass-breaking, birit heights of Regine Velasquez or Mariah Carey.

And theres that JLo booty which she can shake, shake, shake like a pair of fleshy maracas.

All out, all her

HARDCORE DANCER. J.Lo is happy to shake-shake-shake. Photo by Magic Liwanag

Despite the bittersweet irony of her being a street-smart Jenny from the Block who declares that her Love Dont Cost a Thing yet espouses exorbitant ticket prices, there is a generosity of spirit to Lopez that shone through that heady evening.

For one thing, JLo was a full-on performer, a modern-day echo of Michael Sembellos Flashdance-era lyric of when the dancer becomes the dance able to cut lose but without being over the edge, able to spread her legs with abandon yet without coming off as Lady Gaga-salacious.

Despite the sturdy barriers and gaping space put in place between the stage and the crowd, a smiling Lopez for several instances stepped on the bars and reached out to the audience on all sides.

It may seem gimmicky but when she quietly got someones camera, posed for it with some of the viewers as background then returned the device, the moment was simultaneously intimate and magnanimous.

Best of all, during the hushest moment of ! the night! , for an acoustic rendition of her debut single If You Had My Love, she went on to invite a random fan up onstage a Filipina who could pass for a Latina like her but looked far more casual than the showbiz personalities who filled the Arena grounds.

The Pinay, Anna Melissa Dasig (who turns out to be an assistant of singer-actress Sharon Cuneta, herself not far away) got to sing the song and sit beside then hug JLo to bits.

That moving episode seemed reminiscent of DJ Casey Kasems American Top 40 motto: Keep your feet on the ground (J.Lo did) and keep reaching for the stars (Dasig did).

Some might dismiss all that as purely an act, most likely repeated at her tours every show to boot. After all, the 43-year-old J.Lo is a movie star, too.

Yet those moments of Lopez connecting with her audience radiated such purity that they can thaw any icy cynicism.

On that note, to these eyes and ears, JLos PHL show was truly a booty-ful experience. - Rappler.com

Watch Rappler's videos of the JLo concert here.