Jennifer Lopez is at her best for ‘All I Have’ at Planet Hollywood

Denise Truscello

Jennifer Lopez is back at the Axis this month.

By Brock Radke (contact)

Wednesday, May 31, 2017 | 2 a.m.

After just a couple of songs to open her May 24 return to the stage at Planet Hollywood’s Axis theater, Jennifer Lopez had to take a break. Not because she ran out of energy. That doesn’t seem to happen, ever. It was her shimmering, barely-there dress: She nearly danced herself out of it.

Lopez was a little late to start the latest run of the aptly named All I Have, but her fans didn’t seem to mind. They all went crazy when the dramatic LED arch across the stage filled up with sparkly video diamonds and “If You Had My Love” blasted into the theater. After a quick fur coat-covered segue into Sheila E.’s “The Glamorous Life” and then her own smash “Love Don’t Cost a Thing,” Lopez warmly chatted up the audience and made self-deprecating jokes while a seamstress jumped onstage to fix the back of her dress. Even at this early point of a nearly two-hour show, it’s clear JLo loves her Vegas gig, which started in January 2016 and has been tightened and tweaked into a rousing, energetic spectacle.

Some of today’s Strip resident headliners attract with their pure talent. Others use their name and fame to throw a big fun music party. Lopez does both, deftly showing the many sides of her star personality in a rapid-fire format. If she lacks the long list of hits that her peers bring to their Vegas shows, nobody notices. She outdances everybody. She does the sentimental balladeer thing, capably singing songs for her twins Max and Emme, and then she does the funky bandleader thing, mixing James Brown and Aretha Franklin. When she decides to get sexy, Lopez strips out of a red dress and seduces everybody to her DJ Mustard track “Girls,” a pretty racy moment for a mainstream show. When she decides to dig into her musical roots, she finds another gear for some heavy Latin jazz choreography late in the show, and celebrates her Bronx origins with a thick, booming hip-hop set earlier in the show. No matter the genre or vibe, she performs with utter confidence, and it’s exciting to watch. By the time she closes All I Have in a futuristic nightclub setting with her two Pitbull collabo tracks “Dance Again” and “On The Floor,” the party’s just getting started. You wanna hit the club and pop bottles, but only if JLo is going, too.

Jennifer Lopez: All I Have will be presented at the Axis at Planet Hollywood on May 31 and June 2, 3, 7, 9, 10 and 11 at 9 p.m. JLo returns to her show again in September. For information, call 702-777-2782 or visit caesars.com.