the Philippines

I didn't get much time to get around in Manila, but I have two bold memories...

the main one is our performance. We performed at an outside venue that barely held the 70,000 fans that came to watch. In a review I read that many were denied entry and simply enjoyed from behind the barricades. My mind had a really hard time grasping over 70,000 people watching us... moreover, when I went to take pictures of the crowd, I couldn't even find the end, the people just kept going! I was on the side of the stage for Chris Brown's performance, having a hard time keeping focus on it when the crowd continued to hypnotize me.  I kept watching them yell in an overwhelmingly loud unison, singing every lyric. It was unreal. 

After he performed, there was a fireworks show. It makes sense they felt they had to do something to prevent the crowd from losing it. I can only imagine how hard it would be to gain order back if that many people went loopy! 

Finally, we were approaching the stage in costume. The dancers all moving their limbs and head to warm up, looking like we were contorting into crazy positions. The singers warming up their voices and tucking their mic packs to ensure their stability behind their backs. The band all pushing buttons, strumming strings and hitting drums to ensure their sounds were tuned. All of us still not digesting the 70,000 in front of us. The lights dropped, the sounds blared and it began. Our set was normal starting with her current hit, "Disturbia"... going straight into "Breakin' Dishes," when the female dancers come out, to "Break it Off," where the male dancers join to "Let Me," where the dancers all exit for a change. 

She continues with two ballads as I preset my next costume and tried to get in some quick shots of the show and the audience. We returned on stage for her first single, "Pon De Replay." It's a quick one for us so we can run off and put on metal scratch boards, gloves and knee pads for our dance number. We enter back on and perform just the dancers and band as she usually uses this time to do a quick change. We call this number 'scratch' as all the dancers are wearing scratch boards that we hit to make sounds that are cohesive to our bands music making. Meanwhile we're wearing laser lights on our head to further stimulate the audiences view. We continue making beats until Rihanna comes back up on her elevator singing "SOS." 

That is our quickest change attempting to go from a full outfit to another, including a change of shoes in time to finish that song with her. She then sings 3 more ballads as I went back to our air conditioned dressing room. Did I mention that it's REALLY hot in Manila, and doing an outside show had us drenched before we even started dancing!

We come back out for "Please Don't Stop the Music" which is a party on stage, followed swiftly by "shut up and drive" where we make chairs our make-shift race cars. Of course, finishing our show with the famous "Umbrella" song.  The show went smooth and the energy was great, but the real indicator of a great show is how much we sweat during it! Without a doubt we were soaked! 

 

the minor memory is simply the shopping. Go figure... I found a new shopping spot. 

The "Green Hills Mall" in Manila is notorious for their perfectly replicated knock-offs with serial numbers and all, and for real designer items that are slightly defective. You could get some really amazing duplicates for as cheap as eight bucks! We even saw Bathing Ape shoes for as cheap as 20! This sounds crazy... but we couldn't believe it ourselves. Styles that are just barely being found in their main stores yet are draped all over this indoor outdoor market. 

Moral of the story... if you want to do some cheap and fun shopping and perform to a great crowd, don't pass on the Philippines... they know how to do it!