Dua Lipa Kicks Off First of Two Dallas Shows With Pop Masterclass

“I’ve waited my whole life for this!”

The palpably giddy shout came from over my left shoulder Tuesday night, as everyone inside the American Airlines Center stood in dimly lit anticipation, the woman of the hour not yet on the stage. 

As simulated waves broke upon the video screen embedded within the enormous stage, Dua Lipa stepped into the spotlight with the opening notes of “Training Season” gathering behind her — and the room simply exploded. 

What unfolded over the next two hours was a remarkable transference of energy between performer and audience, a sustained blast of exhilaration and good feeling which simply kept escalating over the course of the evening. 

Nearly every move Dua Lipa made was greeted with a visceral roar from the near-capacity crowd, its phones outstretched to capture every moment, dancing and singing with blissful abandon.

Tuesday’s performance was Dua Lipa’s first in Dallas in three years (and returned her to the venue she last headlined), and the first of a two-night stand, which continues Wednesday. The Grammy Award-winning British pop star is touring behind her third studio album, last year’s impeccable Radical Optimism, and as such, she favored the new material heavily on stage. 

Said stage was stuffed with personnel apart from the 30-year-old singer and songwriter — Dua Lipa was backed by a seven-piece live band, and a phalanx of 14 dancers, whose lithe, seductive movements matched the headliner’s own. 

Punctuating nearly every song with smoke, lasers, fire, or strikingly edited video clips (often one or more of those elements) gave the night a dizzying, almost destabilizing momentum. Most acts are content to fire off the confetti cannons once — Dua Lipa did so no less than five times on Tuesday.

All the pageantry, complete with a battery of costume changes, wouldn’t mean much if the songs weren’t so damn good. Radical Optimism is Dua Lipa’s finest album yet, a sharply calibrated mixture of four-on-the-floor bangers (“Training Season,” “Falling Forever” and the night’s finale, “Houdini”) and bittersweet ballads (“These Walls,” “Happy for You,” which she sang Tuesday amid a striking tableaux of clouds) which, in concert, blossomed beautifully. 

As is her custom on this tour, Dua Lipa also paid homage to a local artist during her set, covering Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone,” which was the only real stumble of the evening. (One could quibble that the night, as with her 2022 stop, was effectively a tight 90 minutes stretched to fill two hours, but that’s like being upset at a dessert for tasting so good.)

What elevated the sensation of symbiosis between artist and audience was her willingness to simply put the spectacle on hold to wander among the fans, all of whom looked as though they might faint from happiness in her presence. 

After “Levitating,” Dua Lipa descended from the stage to work her way along a string of fans, some of whom were celebrating birthdays — “Everyone say happy birthday, Jeffrey!” — bearing gifts or simply seeking selfies. Unruffled by all of it, the pop star politely acquiesced, even bounding off the satellite stage near the concert’s climax to deliver on a promise to a fan who traveled from Brazil for a photo. 

Rather than pandering, it felt genuine — an artist who, for whatever mystifying reason, has long seemed to enjoy A-list success if not necessarily the glaring spotlight which should rightly accompany it, and a woman who, from all outward appearances, Tuesday seemed truly moved by the crowd’s response.

Situated atop a suspended platform, clad in an enormously oversized white fur wrap, Dua Lipa sang an acappella verse of “Anything for Love,” and unprompted, the crowd began chanting her name.

“Dallas, I’m lost for words,” she said. “I’m living my dream, doing what I love.” 

The ease with which Dua Lipa commanded such an expansive room — the stage was an exemplar of high-dollar pop maximalism, loaded with screens and lights and bodies — laid bare the simple truth animating everything. 

The pure pleasure the artist takes in fostering that connection, building and fortifying that love, was reflected and refracted endlessly on Tuesday, a glimpse of radical optimism in full force.