Dua Lipa exclaims “This is the nicest welcome home ever

“We’ve been looking forward to putting this concert on for a long time. We’ve relocated it, postponed it, and now we’re finally here.”

The 26-year-old had walked down the catwalk of her massive stage moments before, slowly raising her hands in the air as she basked in the adoration of 21,000 fans who had waited two years to see her perform at Manchester’s AO Arena.

This wasn’t simply another pop show; it was a reunion.

We need to go back in time for context. The Future Nostalgia tour was first announced in December 2019, as news of a new, potentially lethal virus emerged from China.

The world was in lockdown by the time Dua’s second album (also titled Future Nostalgia) arrived the following March, and the tour had been canceled.

The singer was concerned about releasing an album of upbeat dance-pop at a time when people were suffering.

“I’m not sure if I’m even doing the right thing,” she said in a sobbing Instagram live, “but I think the thing we need the most right now is music, joy, and trying to see the light.”

Her intuition was correct. Instead of reminding us of what we’d lost, the album foreshadowed a time when we’d be pressed against each other again, singing these songs in sweat-soaked unison. To put it another way, Dua had a “premonition that we have a tendency to had fallen into a rhythm wherever the music ne’er stops forever,” and Future Nostalgia became the most-streamed album of 2020.

Despite this, Covid restrictions hampered her tour. It was postponed and rescheduled three times, forcing Dua to find new ways to keep her music alive – a remix album, a spectacular live-stream, and a steady trickle of new songs, including the chart-topping Elton John duet Cold Heart.

All the while, excitement for the concerts grew, as did the roar that greeted the star on Friday night.

Dua kicked off the show with Hot Streak’s 1980s breakdance classic Body Work (“music makes you lose control”), signaling her intention to celebrate dancefloor abandonment.

She took the stage in an electric pink Balenciaga corset bodice, to the bubbling synth groove of Physical, throwing shapes at a ballet barre before romping down the catwalk and dipping into some 80s-inspired aerobics moves.

The star blasted through her biggest songs – New Rules, Break My Heart, Love Again, Be The One – flanked by 12 inexhaustible dancers for the next 40 minutes.

The staging was pleasantly restrained for a pop show, focusing attention on Dua’s impressive vocals while allowing the band to stretch her songs for maximum dancefloor impact. It’s a trick Dua learned from Madonna: inserting her music directly into the pop canon, paying homage while asserting her dominance. In lesser hands, it would be an exercise in arrogance, but Future Nostalgia’s platinum-plated hits withstood the comparisons.

The choreography, which drew on decades of dance history, was equally as clever. Cool saw Dua orbited by two roller-disco skaters, while New Rules got a Gene Kelly-inspired umbrella routine.

Charm La’Donna, who choreographed this year’s Super Bowl half-time show, riffed on Bob Fosse’s chair routines during Hallucinate and added New York Warehouse vibes to the dance hit Electricity. She even threw in some hokey-cokey at one point.

But it had been close to the top of the video once Dua recreated the notorious embarrassing hip-wiggling action that spawned the “Dua can’t dance” acculturation in 2019. (One witness remarked, “I admire her lack of vitality.”)”Go girl, don’t give us any of your stuff”).

She amplified it this time, demonstrating not only her stagecraft but also her ability to laugh at herself.

More of that humour would have helped the show a lot. A gigantic inflatable lobster appeared during We’re Good, which provided the only other peek of the star’s wacky side (a throwback to the music video that would take too long to explain here).

She floated above the audience singing Levitating in a Thierry Mugler catsuit embroidered with 120,000 crystals that turned her into a human glitterball for Friday’s finale. She thrashed her hair violently to the title track of Future Nostalgia before taking a victory lap around the disco-funk of Don’t Start Now.

The supporters drowned her out for the second time… almost as if they’d spent the lockdown learning the phrases and were finally having the chance to play out their fantasy. Dua, who was on stage, was going through the same thing.

Baby, she did a complete 180. And then there’s the fact that she ended up where she did.

The Future Nostalgia tour, on the other hand, isn’t designed to be amusing. It’s all about commemorating Dua Lipa’s arrival in her life.