Salt Lake City, USA feb 22nd

Celine Dion fans do not hold grudges.

 

The 11,000-plus people who showed up Sunday night for the Canadian superstar's makeup show, rescheduled from November, roared their approval when she apologized.

 

"We made it!" she exclaimed, dropping to her knees after her opening number, "I Drove All Night." "Tonight we're going to make up for all that lost time."

 

She made good on that promise with a performance that included 19 songs, six costume changes, a seven-piece band, three backup singers and an athletically-inclined troupe of eight dancers.

 

Dion, who turns 41 next month, was pretty nimble herself, dropping to her knees and arching backwards while wearing silver stiletto sandals and a beaded lavender dress that hit her mid-thigh.

 

She fist-pumped, winked, and mugged for cameras that showed her larger than life on four giant video screens hanging over the stage. In between songs, she chatted up the crowd with banter about her 81-year-old mother and 8-year-old son, who are touring with her.

 

"Come on, Salt Lake City. Show me what you got," she exhorted the audience after sharing a new song, "Shadow of Love," and before launching into fan-favorite "I Am Your Angel."

 

Her voice was in fine form, although the cavernous arena's acoustics overpowered her vocals on "All By Myself" and "To Love You More."

 

And her duet with a videotaped Andrea Bocelli on "The Prayer" was a little strange, because he wasn't there. But the crowd couldn't have loved her more at that point.

 

When she came back for her second encore, clad in a billowing black chiffon gown whose feathered hem tickled her ankles, she gave them what they had to have.

 

And just how many times has she performed "My Heart Will Go On," from "The Titanic"?

 

With Celine Dion, you'd never know that it wasn't the first.

 

Who: Celine Dion

Where: EnergySolutions Arena

When: Sunday

Bottom line: The Canadian songstress made up a missed November show with a 19-song extravaganza that showcased her voice and legs.

CELINE DION, EnergySolutions Arena, Sunday

By Erica Hansen

Deseret News

 

http://i41.tinypic.com/zoi6pk.jpg

 

Celine Dion fans have been waiting since November — when an infection forced the pop singer to reschedule her Salt Lake tour stop.

 

But by the time she rose from underneath the stage in a short lavender dress with rhinestone detail, belting "I Drove All Night" and "I'm Your Lady," the fans were clearly ready to forgive her.

 

"I want you to know I'm extremely sorry for that," the singer said while catching her breath from the opening numbers. "I know how hard it is for you to prepare an evening and I never want to let you down." With that, all had been forgiven and the crowd was ready to go along for the ride ... and a ride it was.

 

With a square stage laid in the middle of the arena floor, with many moving parts, rising platforms, moving sidewalks and ramps — the look changed with each number.

 

Dion pretty much let her singing do the talking, belting her way through many of her hits: "Taking Chances," "It's All Coming Back to Me," "Because You Love Me," and "To Love You More."

 

When she did talk, her interactions were warm and genuine. "It's so pretty here (in Salt Lake City), I can't believe we've never been before!"

 

That was met with cheers and whistles from the fans.

 

Dion, who said she's calling this tour a Family World Tour, brought her 81-year-old mother on the road with her, as well as her 8-year-old son. She quipped that when he asks for pancakes in the morning, he does so in several different languages.

 

A small group of dancers was there to cover her many costumes changes — from glittery tank tops and black leather pants to rhinestone vests and sequined mini-dresses. Dion handled her stilettos with ease and seemed to enjoy interacting with her dance troupe.

 

Blind opera singer Andrea Bocelli also made an appearance — on video — for a duet with Dion on "The Prayer."

 

With plenty of her signature moves — a chest thump, some high kicks and falling back on her knees like a guitarist in a rock band, Dion seemed energized by the crowd and sounded like her voice had certainly fully recovered.

 

The audience was delighted each time she belted a power note and also loved any time she sang a cappella.

 

Needless to say, when she said goodbye, the cheers continued. After another costume change, this time into a gold and silver short sequined dress, she came back out to do "River Deep, Mountain High." One more dress change — into a black billowy dress, the music to "Titanic's" "My Heart Will Go On" started and the crowd went nuts. Dion sang the song with the feeling of someone who was singing it for the first time.

 

When it was time to go, Dion left the stage and walked out through the crowd, touching hands with fans and waving goodbye.

Celine Dion in full force at HP Pavilion

 

Joel Selvin, Chronicle Senior Pop Music Critic

 

Monday, February 23, 2009

 

Celine Dion makes faces when she sings.

 

She crinkles up her nose. She arches her eyebrows. She winks and darts quick little smiles after she ends a line. Her face is such a studied mask of projected emotion, she sometimes inadvertently looks like someone experiencing intense pain - all relayed in pinpoint detail, splashed 20 feet tall on the giant video screen above the stage.

 

More than a year after the pricey tickets first went on sale, three months after she postponed the original date at the last moment under doctor's orders, the long-legged lung-buster from Quebec finally made her way back to the Bay Area on Friday for her first concert in 10 years at the HP Pavilion in San Jose.

 

From a stage in the center of the arena floor, underneath not one, but two video superstructures, with hydraulic lifts and people-mover conveyor belts reconfiguring the stage for every number, Dion poured it on. You want cheese? She is a Velveeta volcano.

 

In a little wisp of a white dress, flecked with gold and sequins, teetering atop impossible heels, she scaled the ramps extending her stage practically into the side sections to reach the dramatic final crescendo of "The Power of Love" right in the faces of the audience - and the close-up video for the other seven-eighths of the crowd. She hit the big note, held it, brought it to a breathless ending and waved her fist in a little athletic flourish, as if to say, "There, I did it."

 

For almost two hours, she held the capacity crowd in her considerable sway with a dazzling series of costume changes, bold, high-tech staging and her own indefatigable life force. Dion has an almost unnaturally loud voice and she uses - some might say over-uses - its power on everything she sings. As with the little eye and cheek comments, she doesn't work with nuance. She has a vibrato wide enough to drive a truck through, and she can slam a song to a close like a sledgehammer.

 

She is more suited to the bogus bombast of Jim Steinman's "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" because the "Bat Out of Hell" mastermind deals in cartoonish landscapes. Her climactic version of "River Deep - Mountain High," the Phil Spector masterpiece done by Tina Turner didn't quite work as well, as the song is rooted in a rhythm and blues vocal style. As Dion demonstrated aptly with her James Brown medley, the girl doesn't have an ounce of funk in her.

 

With Dion, what matters is a connection to her audience through a combination of style, presence and her musical abilities, plus the sense to her largely female following that, despite all the glamour on the surface, deep down she is one of them. She knows the pain of being a woman; she knows the joys. Her songs could be about anyone's lives; it takes Celine to bring them to life, fill them with stardust and enhance their inspirational qualities through her own unique gifts.

 

"Put yourself in my shoes," she says, "and ladies, you know I have a lot of shoes."

 

Dion is a singing Barbie doll come to life, all wardrobe, hair and makeup, surrounded by a gang of boy and girl dancers.

 

She stayed close to her hits, offered a couple of selections from her 2007 album, "Taking Chances," but nobody comes to a Celine Dion concert to hear her sing Gershwin. She did sing a video duet with Italian opera star Andrea Bocelli - her on the stage, him on the lower video screens and the two of them joined on the larger video screens above.

 

She waited to close with her "Titanic" hit, "My Heart Will Go On," reappearing for her second encore in a floor-length black gown, as banks of candles were lowered from the rafters. Even though in the end she is serving relentlessly middle-brow aesthetics, an artistic vision as powerful as hers sweeps up everything in its path. Celine Dion cannot be denied.

Edited February 24, 200916 yr by SuuS