It’s lovely to see Mika performing at small venues in Paris. The private, promotional event at La Cigale was a proper, almost full length show. The venue was small and pretty and offered a nice view also from the sides and the back of the venue. The audience was directly in front of the stage, no barriers there, and during the show Mika used every opportunity to be as close to people as possible and that way made the atmosphere even more special and warm.

I was eager to see a gig at this venue but didn’t have particularly high expectations for the length of the show. The scheduled time for the performance was quite short but eventually Mika added a lot and the performance we saw was only a bit shorter than the gigs he did in North America. I knew he would do Ice Cream and Jealousy but wasn’t expecting both Tiny Love and Tomorrow and made me really happy to hear those both songs. The crowd was singing the new songs along loudly and that was instant positive feedback on the album and brought a huge smile on Mika’s face.

He was dancing and jumping around and the crowd bounced along, the venue had a funny bouncy floor like old-school venues often do. We got all the usual high energy songs (Relax, Big Girl, EMD, Love Today, Golden, Grace Kelly) and in addition to that not only my regular favourite Underwater but also Origin and beautiful Happy Ending. The band was mostly on the background but I immediately noticed David from the Imaginarium Tour behind the keyboards. Such a surprise and everyone I know mentioned him after the gig.

I could see Mika made a lot of effort to make the vibe cozy and it was really sweet of him. He did Big Girl in the middle of the crowd and again it was like a bonus gift to people standing further away and caused a lot of excited reactions in the audience. He was reaching over people while singing, there was no barrier so it was possible for him to do that, and most of the time he was literally standing his shoes half out of stage so he really couldn’t have been any closer to us without jumping on someone’s arms and quite a few times he went down so everyone in front could see him more easily. Always so special to see him in circumstances like that and I really enjoyed the performance. Sweet, lovely and cozy memory before the big tour with huge venues starts in a few weeks.