While her bandmates remained on the ground, she twirled, flipped, and kicked, never missing a note from her 2010 single, "Let's Get This Party Started."
Halfway through the song, two of her dancers entered the stage, hanging upside down on a duel ring prop, while they assisted P!nk in an astounding aerial trick. The dancers held her feet as she sang upside down for 12 seconds without pause.
The show's first six songs dipped into her older discography with timeless classics. "Raise Your Glass" saw her dance crew pile out in colorful attire for the party anthem celebrating the underdog. Flamingo scooters graced the stage, cruising around P!nk and company, stressing the idea that while P!nk sells out arenas and stadiums and collects countless cash. She doesn't allow her status to prevent her from having fun.
The bedazzled performer traipsed between upbeat party songs and slower, somber tunes about lost love. "Who Knew," a 2006 song off of P!nk's fourth studio album, I'm Not Dead, follows two young kids dealing with the effects of a breakup after they shattered their guise of forever.
P!nk's shows never focus solely on her as the performer. Her team comprises talented dancers, acrobats, singers, musicians, etc. Last weekend at Amway, two female dancers donning white sashayed on stage for a foray into what happens when a once love-ridden relationship turns sour. After the two scurried off stage, two male dancers approached for their side of the old relationship. With this demonstration, P!nk extended her pro-LGBTQ views without pausing the show to get political or preachy.
Photo by Phil DeSimone
Pink plays Amway Center in Orlando, Florida on Nov. 18, 2023.
When feelings of pining for previous loves fizzle, resentment—and new relationships (sometimes toxic)—trickle in. The next song, "Just Like a Pill," focuses on the addictive mindset behind toxic relationships. "And I swear, you're just like a pill, 'stead of making me better, you're making me ill," P!nk belts in the iconic chorus. During this song, she spotted an eager-eyed fan on the top left of the catwalk, leaning over the barricade, vying for her attention. She held his hand for a whopping half-a-second, just enough for him to collapse on the metal barricade, pressing his hand to his face, hoping to inhale a morsel of P! nks's DNA.
The first song on the second act, "Turbulence," brought the aerial skills back. P!nk and her dancer, Khasan Brailsford—one of the most talented in the troupe—explored their chemistry, beginning on the ground and traversing into the air. "Turbulence" focuses on the pitfalls accompanying life, relationships, and love, a theme explored in Trustfall.
Arguably P!nk's favorite portion of the night consists of her exquisite piano player diving into a tune she's written, co-written, or produced. If she guesses the correct title, she gets her favorite reward, a piece of candy. Between Milky Way, Twix, and Twizzlers, she picked the licorice as compensation for guessing "But We Lost It," a number off her 2017 Beautiful Trauma album, then chucked the other pieces into the audience, accidentally dropping a sugary sweet on a security guard.
The performer took this respite from singing to joke with the audience. As she piled a Twizzler into her mouth, she quipped how they tasted much less plastic than Red Vines, the licorice of the West Coast. Met with thunderous applause, she jested, "Who here still steals their kids' Halloween candy when they're asleep?" With more applause and laughter, she added, "You're bad people." Chapman stepped off stage for the headliner's solo piano song.
P!nk prefaced the next song, claiming it's a love song by Bob Dylan that she fell in love with after hearing Adele's melted butter voice covering "Make You Feel My Love." The singer confessed that she's trying to write a love song but needs her husband to take out the trash to clear her writer's block.
A touching moment during the two-hour show ensued when P!nk invited her daughter, Willow, onstage for a live duet of their collab, "Cover Me in Sunshine." Willow's voice matched her mother's well. However, she looked overcome with stage fright, remaining frozen in place in a knee-length dress with an off-white label branded on the front.
Summing up the celebration of difference and the music that brings us together, P!nk thumbed through other catalog favorites like "Don't Let Me Get Me," "Blow Me (One Last Kiss)," and a newer number ripe off Trustfall "Never Not Gonna Dance Again."
Though the encore for Trustfall did not end with a song from the album, P!nk did cement a trustfall over the audience during her final performance. She skipped on stage, clad in her harness needed for her aerial stunts, as the backing beat to "So What" raged on. She exclaimed, "I'm coming to see y'all on top!" Once fastened in the ropes, she raised 20 feet into the sky, warming up the audience for the following tricks.
The acrobatic singer ricocheted through the arena, gracing even the nosebleeds with a crystal clear picture of the singer's staple blonde mohawk. She tumbled into the bridge, piping, "I gave my all, you weren't there, you let me fall," again, upside down, as she trustfell above the audience's arms while confetti cannons erupted simultaneously. The bungees shot her through the variegated papers as she finalized her rounds around Amway.
Flipping, tumbling, and walking on air throughout a packed, 20,000-seat arena solidifies P!nk's ending remarks. So what? She's still a rockstar, she's got her rock—and aerial moves—and she knows how to have fun.
