Ricky Martin takes you behind the scenes of his One World tour as it kicks off in Australia

AFTER several weeks of countless hours of rehearsal and no sleep, Ricky Martin lifts the veil on his One World tour which opens in Australia this week.

EMBARGOED FOR APRIL 19: Exclusive behind the scenes/slash rehearsal shots of Ricky Martin's One World tour. Picture MUST CREDIT: Chino Lemus

Ricky Martin is terrified of a wardrobe malfunction.

During the final dress rehearsal for his One World tour in a Sydney sound studio last week, Martin was testing the limits of the costume change, dancing behind the impressive set to switch outfits at least half a dozen times.

He’s particularly worried about the kilt. He hasn’t worn one before and the dance moves for that number could prove accidentally revealing.

“You know what I am really concerned about? Forget about me knowing the lyrics, forget about the staging. It’s wardrobe. I have a lot of changes of clothes and I go from jeans to this kilt in one song back to some leather pants. And I’ll be sweating so how am I gonna pull on leather pants? And shirts, shirts, shirts. More shirts,” he says.

“I am pretty much changing on stage. Not as part of the show but because I don’t have time to go backstage. So I’m telling the lighting guys, ‘Dudes, blind them! I need light to change but I don’t want the crowd to see what I’m doing.”

For the past six weeks, Martin and his team have been building the stage and impressive geometric video screens, rigging lights, testing hydraulic platforms and the moving Mustang which stars in one section of the show.

There have been countless hours of singing and dancing. And very little sleep.

Everyone is running on adrenaline in the final week but the show, which made its debut in New Zealand before opening the Australian run in Townsville on Friday, looks good.

Any signs of exhaustion dissipate when Martin walks into the Fox Studios lot to greet the lucky 200 fans who won the chance to check out the rehearsal via KIIS 106.5.

He jokes with them about the mistakes they will see during the run-through of the state-of-the-art pop concert.

“This is where all of the mistakes are supposed to happen, which is something the audience never gets. I like that,” he says before he walks on to the lot.

The One World concert is staged in various acts, kicking off with a “hardcore club dance” section, which blends into a set of songs with a rock edge, before the more intimate, catch-your-breath ballads and finishing with a Latin carnival.

It is high energy, packed full of hits and features the bells and whistles the pop fan has come to expect at a concert.

“There is something my audience always expect from me and that’s the Latin, regardless of the country, whether it’s Latin America, Australia, Germany,” he says.

What they won’t get is any lipsyncing or Martin leaving all the vocal heavy lifting to backing vocalists during the more intensive dance sequences. The 43-year-old singer says he is “freaked out” by miming.

“Now with the technology, you can do so much,” he says, before pausing. “A lot of people say ‘Rick, you dance so much, it’s OK if once in a while you let the track kick in’

“I get too nervous. It’s not in me. I can’t. It’s something that freaks me out. Great artists do it, legends do it, I can’t.”

What he can do is assemble some of the best technicians, crew, dancers and musicians in the world to help make him look good.

And many of them on the One World team are Australian. Former So You Think You Can Dance competitor Nick Geurts, who has also featured on Kesha and Lady Gaga tours, is one of four male dancers on stage with Martin.

“It’s a very diverse show so offers great opportunities to a dancer,” Geurts says.

“You have to connect on stage straight away and that can be difficult at times but with someone like Ricky, it is pretty easy. He is such an awesome guy.”

Martin also sets an example for his team, repeating the mantra that they get sleep when they can, maintain a healthy diet and stretch, stretch and then stretch again.

The production and technical crew probably don’t adhere as religiously to the instructions.

Australian production and lighting designers Richard Neville and Alex Grierson, who started working with Martin on his last Australian tour in 2013, agree that starting with a blank canvas in an era where pop stars are constantly raising the bar on the concert spectacular can be daunting.

They spent a month throwing around ideas hoping it would be “big enough”. Both men are self-confessed fans who nominate Livin’ Le Vida Loca as one of those songs you grow up with that stays with you for life.

“People have such high expectations now; you expect artists to be popping onto the stage from below and coming out of giant video screens,” Neville said.

“Everything about Ricky and his music is massive so we tried to come up with a really clean design and then go pop and finish with a fiesta. You have to cover each of Ricky’s musical personalities.”

Grierson said the technology involved with a show like this is state-of-the-art. There are more than 2000 lighting cues and more backups for the backups should a computer malfunction.

“From the lift that brings Ricky to the stage deck to the lights, there’s a computer in everything. You design something outlandish and then spend the rest of the time figuring out how to fix it if it breaks,” he said.

Music director and multi-instrumentalist David Cabrera has been with Martin for more than 16 years and it is his job to work with the star on the songs and the performance.

He said the biggest challenge they faced was how to reinvent hits from She Bangs to Shake Your Bon-Bon without losing the essence of the song. She Bangs gets an intriguing makeover in the One World show.

“It can be very challenging to take a song like Livin’ La Vida Loca and flip it. At first it seems blasphemous to mess with one of the best pop songs of all time, with such a signature song, but we have been able to do it three or four different times over the years,” Cabrera said.

“And then, after all of that, he will go back to the classic version.”

The One World tour, Townsville Entertainment Centre, April 24 and 25, Brisbane Entertainment Centre, April 28, Allphones Arena, Sydney, April 30, Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne, May 2, Adelaide Entertainment Centre, May 5 and Perth Arena, May 8.

Ricky Martin has also confirmed he will perform at the Logies on May 3.