STUDIO 2054 — A Retro/Futuristic, Escapist Heaven, and Another Triumph for Dua Lipa
Dua Lipa promised to bring the feel of the legendary Studio 54 into the future with her online live stream experience. How did she deliver?
The year is 2020. A pandemic has taken over the world, concerts and clubs are but a distant memory for most of the planet. In this global situation, artists had to get creative in order to gain revenue and bring their bodies of work to life. Miss Dua Lipa (Dula Peep, for true fans), released one of the biggest albums of the year with Future Nostalgia, a 12 song compilation, filled to the brim with retro bangers and disco influences, and took the world by storm. Having had her Future Nostalgia Tour (set to take place this year), sadly canceled (or postponed, at this moment), she definitely needed something to take her success to the next level.
The solution: Studio 2054. An online live stream experience, with the promise to bring the feel of the legendary Studio 54 into the future. So did she deliver?
Briefly: Yes. Undeniably, 100% yes. Viewers were treated to an hour of top-notch entertainment, with Dua delivering massive hits from her two studio albums and several droplet singles, and features she’s done in the past 5 years. If you didn’t have a chance to experience it, let’s walk through club “Studio 2054” real quick
The show opened with her latest album’s opener, and title track: Future Nostalgia. Dua is surrounded by dancers, providing the closest thing to a club setting many of us have seen in months. It fully sets the stage for what we’re about to witness: a fun, carefree, escapist musical paradise.
Up next, we get a fantastic, well choreographed and performed rendition of her latest single Levitating (the original version, without rapper DaBaby). An obvious question arises, that has been puzzling pop music fans for over a year: When and how did Dua Lipa get those moves and become a bona fide pop star. The days of the awkward-moving girl from as close as 2019 are dead and gone, and this performance proves it. Things slow down a little bit with “Pretty Please” before we move on to the next section of the 2020s hottest club.
Surrounded by colorful hula-hoops, Dua struts her stuff to “Break My Heart”, segueing into the first superstar guest of the night: FKA Twigs, who performs what could only be described as a mind-blowing pole dance routine.
No time is wasted before we’re taken to the DJ booth next-door, where “Club Future Nostalgia” collaborator Blessed Madonna takes us to the dancefloor to the sounds of Physical, one of the year’s biggest singles worldwide, and with a reason. The performance is energetic, pulsating, reminiscent of a jazzercize class, but in a club setting. Sounds wrong, but it looks so right. Dua continues to serve choreography, while not missing a note, which must be commended. “Boys Will Be Boys”, the feminist, empowering closer of her last studio album, gets a shoutout in the form of the Zach Witness Remix, off the “Club Future Nostalgia” remix album, released earlier this year. Several roller skating dancers take the floor while Dua lowers the temperature with “Cool”, before we follow her and several dancers to the next stage.
On the way there, we’re treated to what could’ve easily been Dua Lipa’s biggest single (had she not outdone herself with her sophomore album): 2017’s New Rules.
A different setting follows, a flowery, red lounge room where our next guest awaits on the television set: Miley Cyrus. Together, they perform their recent collaboration, “Prisoner”, in the form of a video that seems like it was filmed together with the music video itself. We pan out and see Dua on the couch, segueing into “UN DIA (ONE DAY)”, yet another massive hit she’s treated us to this year. Via video, we’re joined by reggaeton legends Bad Bunny, J Balvin and Tainy. The features don’t stop there, as we’re joined by Belgian singer Angèle, and get a fun performance of their sultry single “Fever”. Dua takes a successful dip into speaking French, while the two dance around the lounge, in an intimate moment, which feels very appropriate for 2020.
The slow-down is brief, as we all move on to the next piece of the set, and a total highlight of the show: One Kiss. If this didn’t get people to get up and dance in their living rooms, nothing will. We move on into proper legendary territory, as the show is enriched by the presence of Australian treasure, and queen of Disco, Kylie Minogue herself. She and Dua perform “Real Groove”, a cut off her latest release (STREAM DISCO ON SPOTIFY FOR CLEARER SKIN). The disco track feels perfectly in place with Dua’s recent discography, as the party continues into Electricity, her Grammy award-winning collab with Silk City. And seriously, if you’re still sitting down at this point of the show, I’d grab a drink, cause the energy is high, the staging of it all is fantastic and the feeling of a club is surreal. There’s no excuse.
As the legends continue popping out of nowhere, Sir Elton John himself gives an interlude and performs his 1972 hit “Rocket Man”. It’s intimate, by a piano and with an ethereal blue-white staging concept.
Meanwhile, our club hostess has made a quick outfit change into a very sparkly rhinestoned bodysuid as she absolutely delivers the next on the list of countless fantastic songs: Hallucinate. She doesn’t miss a step throughout the performance, and as she draws the show to an end, we hear a very familiar cowbell sound, which could only mean one thing.. Don’t. Start. Now. The song that kicked off this impeccable era in her career. The song that helped solidify her as a main pop girl, and proved she absolutely has what it takes to dominate the world. Not even a pandemic could stop her, as she set out to make the world dance, even if it meant in their living rooms.
As the song, and the show, wrap up, our pop superstar walks through all of the stages that Studio 2054 consisted of, as the camera pans out to reveal the entirety of the massive stage that was build to house this magnificent show. It’s basically impossible to find a flaw in tonight’s spectacle. Even though we’re all still missing live events, it’s admirable to see the effort and creativity that goes into getting the world to unite with the power of music and dance. Thousands of us were part of the same club tonight, no matter how far apart we were.
As she rides the wave of an astounding 6 Grammy nominations this week (which some argue were rigged *cough cough Abel*), Miss Dula Peep, Dua Lipa, can mark this night as yet another one of her massive victories this year, and I for one can not wait to see what she does next.
