Dua Lipa – Spark Arena: April 2, 2025 (13th Floor Concert Review)
Dua Lipa brought her Radical Optimism Tour to Auckland’s Spark Arena last night, delivering a tightly choreographed 2-hour set filled with glitter, glamour, and glorious music, proving she is not only well on her way to becoming an immortal entertainer – but that her meteoric rise is only just beginning.
First, let’s get this out of the way: If you want to know if Dua Lipa is worth the money, the travel, the eight-octaves-too-high-teen-scream-fest, then the answer is: Yes. Every damn cent. There are artists who make great music, and artists who provide great entertainment… and then there’s the rare combination of the two that can transport a stadium into a different reality for an evening.
Dua Lipa – with her phenomenal crew of musicians and dancers – turned Spark Arena into a glitter-drenched daydream last night – the kind of show that doesn’t just flirt with pop perfection, it steps on its gasping neck in five-inch heels and sparkles while doing it. The Radical Optimism tour had arrived, and for two hours, Auckland forgot about the rain and reality and everything else that wasn’t thumping bass, endless legs, and laser-sliced choreography drenched in fireworks and heart-shaped confetti.
If you showed up expecting a cute dance-pop set with a few TikTok hits and a smoke machine or two, surprise: Dua brought the entire disco inferno and set her fans’ hearts on fire. From the moment the lights dropped and that low pulse of “Training Season” started creeping in against a dizzying backdrop of swirling waves, the hungry crowd turned delightfully ravenous. A roar of teenage screams, a sea of phone flashlights, and a wave of synthetic funk rolled over the arena like we were all about to be initiated into the Church of Lipa.
There was barely a warm-up period. The crowd didn’t need it. Just heels, hips, and a perfectly timed strut as Dua slid onto the stage like she’d been carved out of chrome. Around her: a team of dancers who didn’t miss a beat for two straight hours – and goddamn, the absolute blood, sweat, and effort that must have been sacrificed to perfect it for this tour – bouncing between 80s aerobics camp, burlesque precision, and at one point, a floating red-velvet fantasy that would’ve made Vegas blush.
The setlist was beautifully curated and presented on stage in the way only a pop star in her prime can do. One hit after another, no breathing room, no filler. “Levitating” hit like a sugar bomb, “Break My Heart” brought the crowd into scream-sing territory, and “Hallucinate” made the floor bounce so hard it felt like the arena might actually lift off.
And yet, it was her next song that had fans surrounding me grinning from ear to ear; a cover of the Lorde song “Royals” – a tour tradition to play one song by a local artist that absolutely delighted the arena. But for me, it was her next song, – “Maria” – that absolutely floored my perception of her as a performer and a songwriter. With a back-up dancer snaking and contorting against a tangerine sunset backdrop, I felt that familiar twinge of a song I knew I’d be playing on repeat for the next three months, and I couldn’t be happier to discover it.
Back in the real world, the stage setup was a full flex that made Spark Arena seem to stretch just to accommodate it. Giant curved walkways let her prowl out over the crowd like a lioness surveying her glitter-covered prey. LED screens flipped between abstract trippy visuals and vintage technicolour chaos, making it feel like we were trapped in a Y2K fever dream – in the best way.
She took moments between the separate, distinct sections of her performance to speak with fans: commenting on their nails and makeup, borrowing a white feather boa that was so perfect it might as well have been an industry plant, signing a deliriously star-struck arm with her signature (and a potential tattoo, apparently) and taking a fan’s phone to give a selfie performance in the final act of the show.
Dua Lipa sells those moments to her fans. Everyone wants that moment. Everyone would pay again at the chance to be one of those lucky few. She’s a star you never want to turn up late for, the kind you’d be happy to push and squeeze and barely breathe to reach with a held-out arm.“Physical” turned the floor into a neon cardio session that bordered on a scene from The Substance. True and undeniable popstar magic. “Falling Forever” was backed by video screens showing charging white horses with overlaid text in slow-mo, building on the emotional depth of the lyrics, which whiplashed into “Happy For You” – a euphoric gut-punch, like crying in a glitter-filled bathroom at 2 a.m. because your ex sucks and your eyeliner still looks amazing.
Her voice is, without any hyperbole, criminally underrated. She’s not just a dancer with a mic – her vocal control is tight, warm, and silky smooth, especially live. There were moments that made me painfully nostalgic for Amy Winehouse and bittersweet in the lost potential. “These Walls” felt almost too intimate for a venue that size, and even during the bigger dance numbers, she never sounded like she was holding back. No lip-sync, no cheats. Just full-body commitment to every note and move.
There was a subtle confidence to everything. Dua never overperforms, even when she’s doing the unthinkable – like prowling down the runway of her stage to perform “Love Again” in a ring of bursting flames before rising on circular disk that floated into the air, suspending her as she continued the song – not for a moment, but for an age, pausing to direct chants from the crowd, absorbing every bit of their awe and joy and transmuting it into a performance of “Anything for Love”. I often (arrogantly) attest that very little can surprise or impress me anymore – but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t one of the most impressive I have ever seen – even momentarily removing my usual passionless response to anyone who asks a crowd to turn on their phone flashlights.
She knows she’s the main character, and she lets the music, fashion, and dancers orbit her without feeling like she’s trying to one-up herself. There’s something wildly powerful about that restraint – she never screams for attention, she just walks, floats, stretches into a room (or arena) and takes it.
The encore flowed as if it were simply Part 5 of the performance; wall-to-wall ecstasy. “New Rules” and “Dance The Night” drew every last drop of energy from the crowd, and yet on “Don’t Start Now” she barely needed to sing a word – the entire arena of fans did it for her, near-perfect and unrelenting, just as you’d expect. Finally, with “Houdini” as the closer, she wished her fans farewell, stalked to the top of her phenomenal stage once more – and she was gone, as ethereally as she had appeared just two hours earlier. No painfully drawn-out finale. No fake goodbye.
Just a final pose, a polaroid-snap glimpse of an icon, killer smile, legs that ran a mile – a burst of frenetic fireworks, and a vanish into blackness. The lights weren’t raised on the room; just illuminated by the infinity stage lights to shine on a crowd that looked like they’d just walked out of a dance-fuelled rapture. Sweaty, dazed, sequin-smeared and absolutely euphoric as they trenched out with pink confetti hearts and a rainbow of paper glitter stuck to their shoes.
Dua Lipa didn’t just perform last night – she curated a fully immersive, high-glam, emotionally surgical pop experience. Auckland didn’t stand a chance. She showed up like a disco Valkyrie, slayed everything in sight, and vanished before we even had time to scream for more.
Radical Optimism and The Rise of a Superstar. What else is there to say but:
Queen Lipa. Long May She Reign.
Oxford Lamoureaux
Photos by Michael Jeong
Dua Lipa 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
