Ricky Martin in HK: Still livin’ la vida loca - FUNFARE by Ricardo F. Lo

HONG KONG – It happens all the time, whether in Milan (April, 1999, during the launching of his self-titled first English-language album) or in Singapore, also last year (Asian promo of the same album), or here in the former Crown Colony where the Latin heartthrob is doing a show, entitled She Bangs (a cut from his second English album, Sound Loaded), at the full-packed Hong Kong Coliseum.

All Ricky Martin has to do to electrify the crowd is shake his bon bon, stab the air with his arms and thrust his pelvis this way and that. In a jiffy, the "master of mass seduction" (as the reviewer of the South China Morning Post describes him) holds the audience in a trance, swinging with him, swaying with him, singing along with him as if in hypnotized prayer.

Smiling (as usual) through the almost two-hour performance, changing into one Armani after another Armani (from a sweatshirt to a black suit to a sleeveless shirt to a long-sleeved white shirt, etc.), Ricky doesn’t look travel-weary at all, even if he has just come from a show in Seoul and is set to do more shows in Taipei, New Zealand and Australia the following days, urging the audience to "feel the beat." Everybody obliges – con mucho gusto!

He opens the show with, but of course, the lusty Livin’ La Vida Loca, revolving his sexy hips in a pair of tight-fitting leather trousers on the hood of a shining, silver convertible sports car while a bikini-clad woman wriggles in ecstacy reclining on the front seat. The huge stage is equipped with giant screens, showing the action magnified a thousand times and with conveyor so that Ricky faces all sections of the coliseum while performing, backed up by a male singer, two female singers, nine dancers and a five-piece band.

Onstage, the Sexiest Man Alive is swinging both ways, from one extreme to another, generating infectious sexuality to the hilt with every thrust of his pelvis and at the same time preaching about spirituality in his spiels, especially when doing an intro to a Spanish ballad or the soulful She’s All I Ever Had which he did as encore (you guessed it, the crowd can’t seem to have enough of him).

"The good thing about Ricky Martin," says Christina Castillo, Sony Music’s marketing director who invited us (Bulletin’s Cris Belen and Inquirer’s Ricky Gallardo) to Hong Kong, "is that he connects with the audience, any kind of audience, as soon as she appears onstage. He’s charismatic."

And how he fills up that stage with boundless energy, appealing to your libido, seducing you into – si, señor! – livin’ la vida loca with him! Everybody at the coliseum, male and female, laps up every bit of him with delight, eager to be caught by the roving video cameras and flashed on the giant screens. Look, are they Bong Revilla’s sisters Rowena and Andrea dancing on their feet? Is that Ai-Ai delas Alas swinging to the beat near the stage? Is that Jinggoy Estrada’s wife Precy Vitug humming along with Ricky, I was for made you and you were for made me?

The audience tonight is mixed, you see, made up not just of Hong Kongers. Several other Filipinos are here purposely for the concert, including Claudia Bermudez and friends, Veanna Fores and Angelu de Leon, Ricky Martin diehard fan Joe Barrameda, Abante entertainment editor Roger Parajes, Alfie Lorenzo and Michael Conan, etc. After the show, we bump into Monique Wilson and mom Terry who take time out from the staging here of The Vagina Monologues for some Latin breather.

There are delegations from Japan, Taiwan, Australia, Singapore and the Philippines (led by Rizza Centeno, president of the Philippine chapter of the Asian Friends of Ricky Martin, who brought in more than 80 "Ricky Martinians").

Halfway through the concert, guess who shows up as the "surprise guest performer" – why, Taiwanese singer Coco Lee, no less (also a Sony Music artist like Ricky), who does a duet of Private Emotion with Ricky. It’s a dream come true, says Coco (her butt prominent in her beige backless gown) Lee. "It’s always been a dream to work with you," she’s telling Ricky, "so I cannot believe I am standing here singing this beautiful song with you."

Ricky caps the show with a lively rendition of Maria (remember the Pepsi commercial?) before he disappears in the dimming stage lights, only to reappear in response to the wildly applauding and yelling crowd ("Ricky! Ricky!! Ricky!!!), hardly exhausted after all the swaying and all the swinging and all the non-stop singing(-along).

The concert starts with a videoclip of Ricky stretching in bed as he greets a new day, languidly opening his eyes; and it ends with another video clip of Ricky’s eyes in extreme close-up, ready to slip into sweet slumber.

Really now, what more is there to life than livin’ la vida loca?

Hasta la vista!