Concert Review - Dua Lipa - Auckland - 2nd April 2025

Presented By Live Nation

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FULL DUA LIPA GALLERY BY GINNY COCKS

Review By: Annora Gollop

Artist/Band: Dua Lipa

Venue/City: Spark Arena, Auckland, New Zealand

Date of Event: Wednesday 2nd April 2025

I was so excited to be going to see Dua Lipa, keen to wash off the farm dirt, put on pretty clothes and dance. I stopped at The Warehouse on the way, for hair clips, and discovered Training Season and Houdini were playing in the store. It felt like Auckland was celebrating Dua Lipa being here. 

Her songs always catch my attention, even before I know she is singing. Behind the catchy words there is always an idea she is unfolding. Listening to Radical Optimism Dua's idea of love has shifted from the spring brightness of Future Nostalgia. This album is about how to recognise healthy love in a sea of illusions. How to choose to be happy even if that means having to leave.  

Outside Spark Arena seven and eight year old girls in sequined skirts were spots of glitter in the all ages crowd cheerfully waiting to get in. 

Inside, opening singer Kita Alexander quickly charmed the friendly crowd in her first NZ show. Her gauzy belly dancing inspired costume and bare feet giving a down under summer feel. Kita dedicated her emotive song Hotel to “anyone who has lost someone” and the crowd got out their phones to make a swaying constellation. Alexander gave a slice of life set that was slow burn, then she turned up the beat with the EDM Atmosphere and got the crowd energised.

For the main event the venue is full and the stage is transformed. 

Act one of Radical Optimism opens with a wave curling in slow motion on the curved front of a full Broadway style double staircase. The wave then flows up the entire back wall of the stage. Dua Lipa appears silhouetted against the crashing ocean. When the lights come up; she is dressed in sequined boots that match all those sparkling kids in the crowd. For the first time I am considering metallic sequins as a fashion choice.  

Dua, her band and dancers launch into Training Season in a full Broadway style production number. There is a low catwalk stretching right out into the crowd, and an incredible lighting rig with a chandelier of mysterious rings above it.  It is already the most immersive show I have ever seen at Spark Arena. The giant contoured screen, multi-level stage and catwalk pushing forward through the crowd under  the serious lighting rig, warm up the Spark Arena and connect the performance with the crowd in a way that I haven't seen in this venue. 

Dua's performance was engaging and energetic. Her dancers celebrate contemporary forms and diversity rather than conformity and she dances among them rather than out in front.

Every song is a full production in a different style, Cabaret, Burlesque, with confetti cannons and fireworks by the time we reach Levitating in Act two. Dua heads over to ask some kids in the front of the balcony how they are doing while her crew adjusts the set. The girls' voices are bell clear in the arena and the crowd holds its breath. She chats to some nice young men and a guy who wants a signature he can tattoo that she decides to make small. She asks one young girl if she can borrow her floor length faux fur scarf and then dances wearing it for the intimate lounge style rendition of These Walls together with the band at the end of the catwalk. To finish stealing our kiwi hearts she does a true to the original rendition of Lorde’s Royals’ with the crowd singing in support.

Act three starts with a spoof of a jazzercise video that most of the younger crowd may have been bemused by. For Hallucinate a trippy neon ring drops down from the chandelier with billows of white confetti. 

Act four has Dua is lost in the clouds for Happy for you and for Love Again she is in a literal ring of fire. Has anything even close to this happened here in an indoor concert? We love our fire dancing outdoors, and in the USA I once saw a man fired out of a cannon though a ring of fire, but this show definitely brought the fire to Spark Arena and it was marvelous. 

Dua introduces “Be the One” as “a song I first sang  in Auckland and I think I'm going to sing for the rest of my life”. Finally, even the shy families in the seats got completely up and jumping for her show closer Houdini finishing a really joyful night.

RADICAL OPTIMISM TOUR SETLIST

Act I 
Training Season
End of an Era
Break My Heart
One Kiss
Act II
Whatcha Doing
Levitating
These Walls 
Royals (Lorde Cover)
Maria
Act III
Physical 
Electricity
Hallucinate
Illusion
Act IV
Falling Forever

Happy for You
Love Again
Anything for Love
Be the One
Encore:
New Rules
Dance the Night
Don't Start Now
Houdini

Dua Lipa NZ AUS Radical Optimisim Tour PR 2025

---