Call it temperature-induced delirium, but when Dua Lipa kicks off her first stadium headline show the crowd is strangely mute. As slow-motion images of crashing waves appear on the screens, augmented by a sound bath-esque drone, the effect it has on the sweltering cauldron in north-west London is close to trance-like. When Lipa finally pops up, standing statuesque at the top of an infinity symbol-shaped stage and resplendent in a white crystal leotard, everyone quickly surrenders to the heat.
It’s a white-hot start, too. Despite relatively lacklustre sales of her third album, last year’s Radical Optimism, its second single, Training Season, whips up an early frenzy as 12 dancers spread themselves across the stage, a stomping Lipa inspecting them like a drill sergeant. By the time her house-y Calvin Harris collaboration, One Kiss, arrives, there’s a danger of peaking too soon.
