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It was a Valentine's Day concert not because the playlist brimmed with love songs or the occasion itself was four days away.
Indeed, it was a chance for effervescent Hong Kong singer Sally Yeh, who's semi-retired, to show her love for the people who had come to see her perform years after her career peaked in the late '80s and early '90s.
To the middle-aged crowd that packed the hall at Suntec on Saturday night, she gave her all — lively wit, a dazzling performance, fireworks and flying shuttlecocks — and her ebullience was infectious.
As soon Yeh appeared on stage in a glimmering white gown singing a medley of Cantonese favourites, it was clear that the 46-year-old singer was in her element.
Her voice had gained nuance and richness over the years but was no less powerful as she delivered selections that included "Cheers", "Beautiful Dreams" and "Happy Birthday".
The evening was not all ballads, however. Fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese and English, Yeh also had the crowd clapping their hands and thumping their feet to Queen's "We Will Rock You".
Yet, as well as she performed the songs — which also included Abba's "Chiquitita", Frank Sinatra's "My Way" and her signature tune "Nite Wind" — it was Yeh's banter with the audience and playful sense of humour that made the evening.
At one point, she skipped to the centre of the stage, jumped up and down and exclaimed gleefully in Cantonese: "This is fun! This is fun! ... My dress is about to burst."
She was referring to how tight her outfit felt after she couldn't resist eating a bowl of Hainanese chicken rice that afternoon.
The concert was doubly exciting because the audience just didn't know what to expect.
They certainly couldn't have anticipated avid badminton player Yeh's decision to lob shuttlecocks into the crowd or offer to pose for photos with NTUC lucky draw winners.
Those in the audience who left before the lights came on missed the best part of the show: Yeh was playfully coy, urging the crowd through messages on the screen to clap — and clap loudly — for her reappearance.
When she eventually did, it was not on stage but among the audience, singing Abba's "Dancing Queen" and hurling plush pigs as she walked the length of the concert hall.
The dancing was about to begin and Yeh set the tone in black baggy pants and a striking, strappy-back, glittery top.
As she sang a hip-hop version of Sandy Lam's "Lover No Come Home", it was hard not to get up and bop along with Yeh and — for the first time that night — her back-up dancers: About 40 eager fans she had invited onstage.
The tableau summed up the evening. As Yeh herself admitted during the concert, she would not be here if not for the loyalty of her supporters.
She thanked them effusively on Saturday night, by entertaining them in the way only she could — with good humour, generosity of spirit and peerless singing. - TODAY/so
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