“These are the my favorite nights, singing and dancing in a tiny room with all of you.” Kiesza poured her heart out to the crowd at 7th Street Entry on Monday night. The Toronto singer-songwriter capped off a tight, unrelenting hour-plus set with a heart to heart with her people.
I’m not gonna lie, I was not stoked about leaving my house for a show on a Monday night, but it only took a couple minutes of opener Bonnie McKee’s set to turn my attitude around.
I’m accustomed to openers with a smaller crowd with less energy than the headliner, but that was very much not the case. I wasn’t familiar with Bonnie McKee going in, but it didn’t take long for me to understand why she’d worked the crowd into such a frenzy.
Bonnie had great songs, a solid stage presence, and a contagious smile. The Entry has a comically small stage, but even if it was bigger, I’d still say it felt too small for her. This became a literal fact when she climbed her branded podium and all I saw from the back was a waist and a set of legs dancing to the music.
She ended her set with a little medley of songs she co-wrote, including Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” and “Dynamite” by Taio Cruz. I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right, it WAS incredibly fun.
Kiesza’s stage set-up consisted of a mannequin torso with a had and a short whip. That’s it. It was just her, being her fantastic self, dancing alongside the phenomenal dancer Jaylen Brown.
With the two of them on stage, you don’t need any fancy LED screens or lasers or involved props. Their dancing throughout the show had them tightly in sync, very loosely synced, doing their own thing.
As she introduced a new birthday song, she asked if anybody in the audience had a birthday today, and sure enough, somebody front and center raised his hand. The way she danced at first, then sat him in a chair and knelt before him, seemed like it was going in one direction, and quickly. What actually happened was the sweetest five or so minutes of dancing and unadulterated joy playing out on stage.
I didn’t catch his name, but the three of them stood at the front of the stage, holding hands and dance-jumping for his birthday. They even brought out an inflatable cake, which Kiesza tossed out into the crowd. But being it was the Entry, attempts to joyfully throw the thing in the air stopped before it left their hands. Two quick thumps against the rafters and they put the cake away.
Over time, a lot of concerts start to look alike. They show up and play their music as though it is more of a duty than a performance. Not so with either Kiesza or Bonnie. They showed up to be with the audience, to mix it up and dance with their fans. It almost felt like more of a house party than a concert, and I mean that in the best possible way.
Kiesza didn’t save the best for last, but she did save her biggest songs for the end. Or the second half. There were a lot more songs than I realized in her catalog and hearing them live took me back to some core memories from a decade ago.
At the wind down after the music stopped, as she was surrounded on stage by what seemed like half the crowd, she touched on getting hit by a car, “I had a hit, then I got hit.” Then she noted the long road from lying in a hospital bed being told she’d never dance again, to standing on a stage in Minneapolis eight years later.
She reminded everyone that the obstacles that get in our way are a big part of what defines us, what gives shape to our story arcs. That you can’t avoid obstacles, but you can grow from them and improve, and become more resilient in the process.
If you happen to be near a future stop on this tour, I HIGHLY recommend you make the effort to attend, even if it’s on a Monday. You won’t regret it.
