Reviews: Dream within a Dream 2002

Here a some articles about the 2nd leg of her "Dream within a Dream" tour.
[ My comments in RED ]


Dazzling...
Circus...




















Britney Dazzles Young Bay Area Fans With An Amazing Show
Marian Liu, Mercury News
Just like Cirque du Soleil has redefined the big top with less emphasis on the animals, Britney Spears brought her greatest show on earth to the Bay Area this weekend with less emphasis on the music.

Without the pyrotechnics, waterfall, acrobatics, dancing and constant costume changes, she would be struggling for attention. Instead, she was Britney, an icon that swarms of little powdered, pigtailed, glossied and glittered girls came to see. They didn't come to the Oakland Arena on Saturday night for the music, they came for an initiation ritual into womanhood, complete with battle cry, ``I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman.''

Like fathers who bring their sons to football games, mothers brought their daughters to see Britney. They even came with their female version of a tailgate party. Before the Oakland show, 6-year-old Crystal Dinh celebrated her very first concert, eating a chocolate cake on Barbie plastic plates out of the back of mom's SUV.

Crystal joined the many girls uniformed and beaming with team spirit. Whether in matching school-girl outfits or T-shirts with Britney's mug all over, they held Britney up as their idol.

Britney did not disappoint -- and left nothing to the imagination. True to her image, she was the girl next door who knew you were spying on her in her bedroom.

She satisfied every male fantasy, from island girl in ``I'm a Slave for You,'' to skin-tight leather Bond-girl in ``Overprotected,'' to wet-shirt summer girl in ``Baby One More Time.'' Along with that, she fulfilled every girl's dreams: From ballerina rising up in a music box in her song ``Lucky'' to popular girl driving in her own car in ``Anticipating,'' to prom queen in ``Don't Let Me Be the Last to Know.''

``As Britney gets older, her performance gets older and is not appropriate for younger girls ages 6-7-8, '' said Teresa Calonico, a Concord mom who took her 14-year-old daughter Carrie to the show. ``So, it's harder for Britney because her fan base is so young. It's a Catch-22 for her.''

Although this ``Dream Within a Dream'' tour was very similar to her November HBO special and her 2001 tour, Britney was every bit as lively. Amid plenty of pyro and a waterfall, she flipped somersaults on bungee cords, ran away from evil dancers in masks, climbed onto a pole and gyrated around every space on the stage.

Parents like Teresa Calonico were not as much watching out for their daughters as they were watching Britney. They were fans on their own merit and wanted to celebrate womanhood with their daughters.

While Carrie Calonico said, ``I want to be just like her. That's my dream, to be a singer and dancer,'' her 47-year-old mother joined in. ``I'm just as big of a teeny-bopper as my daughter. And if Justin is not with Britney, he has to be with my daughter,'' she said, referring to N'Sync's Justin Timberlake.

Britney also showed her darker side. She rose to the scene with an ``Oops'' medley on a circular metal plate, clad in black, like a target for the audience in the Flesh Fair from the Steven Spielberg movie ``A.I.: Artificial Intelligence.'' She then plunged head-first into cobwebs in a nightmarish scene like ``Beetlejuice'' meets ``Nightmare Before Christmas.''

``It was supposed to be pop, I was like, `What's up with this angry woman?'' said Vincent Chin, a 21-year-old from Berkeley.

And with this darker Britney, she belted out a song she recently wrote, a bitter wail about a ``mystic man.'' It was set in the same tones as her opening act, Nikka Costa, but while Costa oozed a mature groovin' funkish soul, Britney's voice faltered. Just as she was bouncing on the line between woman and girl, she was skipping between rock, pop and soul.

But in the end, Britney showed her headlining power and delivered an unforgettable performance.

Kylea Miramontez's eyes bugged out from beginning to end. The 11-year- old has seen another world-renowned diva perform, but that show didn't compare to Britney. ``She was much better than Madonna.''

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Britney's Show: A Sexy Circus
Tony Hicks, Contra Costa Times
THERE WAS the briefest of moments at the Oakland Arena on Saturday night when there were no explosions, harrowing trapeze acts, or dancers throwing themselves from one end of the stage to the other. Britney Spears spent about 100 seconds sitting on the edge of a piano bench, busting forth (relatively) gritty vocal chops on a song she claimed to have written a few days ago. And her lips were moving along with the words, so it's nearly certain she wasn't lip-synching.

Britney was singing the blues ... sort of.

Maybe all these reports of her demise and big break-up with Justin Timberlake are getting to her. Maybe that's not a bad thing, because her brief eye-in-a-hurricane ditty was the purest musical moment all night. Her next career phase won't be as the next Etta James, but it wasn't half bad either. But it was brief, as there was still work to be done. If Britney's popularity is waning -- and it is, judging by the scattered empty seats in an arena she would have filled three times over a year ago -- then nobody's told the star herself. Nobody's trimming the production budget, which is good, because a big bang is still where her value lies. Fan intimacy is still a foreign concept with Britney. This show has to play well from the front row to the rafters, which it did. What you saw was what you got -- a circus act complete with blaring soundtrack. For the most part, it worked.

Britney opened with "Oops! ... I Did It Again," and plowed through three years worth of hits, with accompanying dance and special effect productions. She did much of it from a long ramp leading from the main stage to a secondary stage far out into the crowd, giving an eyeful to as many people as possible. Though she worked hard and the production was busy enough to stave off anything resembling boredom, there were a few things lacking. There was no real big defining moment and hardly anything personal from Britney to her screaming, adoring fans (many of whom, funny enough, were grown men with very big eyes). The blueprint for this show obviously came from Janet Jackson, but Britney didn't absorb some of Jackson's ability to connect with the crowd.

Oh, she flashed the famous smile all night and turned on the charm when necessary. But not once did Britney say or do anything during the 85-minute show to discern this tour stop from Dallas, Kansas City, or Chicago (how about a perfunctory "Hey, it's really great to be here in Oakland --- how 'bout them A's?") There's still definitely something likable about this 20 year old, whose stage act is trying to mature in the way of Jackson or Madonna. Despite the shirt-ripping sexiness of it all, there's still enough of that soft-voiced shy girl act to endear her to the young kids, of which there were plenty on Saturday (but she wasn't fooling anyone during the accompanying video to "Anticipated" when her and a carload of girlfriends were doing nothing more than driving around licking lollipops. If you want to be sexual, just come out and do it).

But Britney won't transition to the ranks of Jackson and Madonna until she can get serious with her music, hints of which appeared on last record "Britney." The lip-synching is still ever present. As early as the second song, "You Drive Me Crazy," Britney wasn't even attempt to sing along with some parts. She's up there pulling off exhausting dance moves with her backing dancers, but to go to the next level she's got to produce the whole package, and that includes singing. A hopeful sign for fans is that the newer music works best live, like "Overprotected" and "I'm a Slave 4 U," where she ripped off her shirt and got down to serious vamp business. A debate over the stripping down onstage is sort of a moot point now -- Britney's sexuality is as important to the act as the songs themselves.

Thankfully, she didn't seek to re-produce the Catholic schoolgirl act during encore "... Baby One More Time." Instead, we got an edgier and faster version with an updated and sweaty dance number -- and a very cool watery stage effect through which Britney and her dancers plunged in a big gondola-thingie. All in all, seeing Britney is like going to the circus: You won't have fun if you spend all night questioning it. She's a born performer who needs to continue maturing the act if she wants longevity.

It wouldn't hurt Britney at all to take notice of tour opener Nikka Costa, whose powerful voice and frenzied dance moves would make her sexy even if she was wearing a potato sack. Costa is a superb performer, even if she endured scattered boos from the pro-Britney crowd. But they might be ready for her in a few more years.

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