POP MUSIC REVIEW : Miami Motion Machine

After her long, arduous recovery from a serious tour-bus accident in March, 1990, Gloria Estefan could have walked onstage at the San Diego Sports Arena on Wednesday to the strains of her current ballad “Coming Out of the Dark,” milking her entrance for every drop of drama.

Instead, she kick-started the show into high gear and saved “Dark” for the closing number of her encore, when the song seemed less a hymn to survival than a balm for an arena full of exhausted revelers.

Any fears that her show would drown in the kind of salty bathos that emotional comebacks encourage were dispelled about three seconds into Estefan’s opening number.

Fronting an eight-piece Miami Sound Machine that was augmented by four seemingly invertebrate dancers and a quartet of backup vocalists, Estefan wasted no time exhorting an idolatrous crowd to heed the imperative of her 1989 dance hit, “Get on Your Feet.”

The frenetic pace established by that tune and its follow-ups--the salsa number “Oye Mi Canto (Hear My Voice)” and “What Goes Around,” a dance jam from her current album “Into the Light”--continued almost unabated for the next two hours. Only an extended, mid-program medley of ballads provided Estefan a respite from a splashy, hyperkinetic show that would have tested the stamina of a triathlete, let alone a woman rehabilitating after major vertebral surgery.

Whether grooving in place, executing tricky choreography with her dancers, or running up stage ramps to bust moves on a plexiglass platform suspended high above the stage, Estefan was a dervish in continuous motion. Perhaps an exhibition of endurance and flexibility was precisely the point of a performance in which Estefan at times seemed part singer, part overwound aerobics instructor.

It was obvious throughout the evening--her first post-accident Southern California concert--and especially during the ballad medley that Estefan’s voice was not affected by her travails.

Especially when contrasted to the blocks of dance jams that surrounded it, this series of love songs demonstrated two things: that Estefan has recorded a surprising number of hit records, and that, in spite of her acclaim, she might be underrated as a vocalist.

Her unwavering intonation, wide range of expressiveness, rhythmic discipline, perfect sense of note placement, and steady, clear tone suggested that she is a singer of the first order.

The band, meanwhile, lived up to its name, sounding well-oiled and precise without being slick. An animated, high-energy, versatile crew, MSM maintained a crisp, percussive drive that never became rote or assaultive.

The players reached back for a little extra down the home stretch, propelling such salsa-cum-disco dance-floor hits as “Dr. Beat,” “1-2-3,” and “Rhythm Is Gonna Get You” into the rafters.

But they couldn’t do much for the new album’s rock-ish “Seal Our Fate”--a musically banal, we-control-our-own-destinies anthem that introduced the concert’s only energy lull late in the evening.

Estefan and band answered that challenge with “Conga,” the 1985 hit (based on a traditional Cuban street dance) that was their first American chart entry.

At their instantaneous recognition of the tune’s opening notes, the audience poured into the open area in front of the stage as Estefan led her charges in a conga line around the perimeter of the stage. Then, with two dancers in tow, the singer climbed to the overhead platform, which was slowly maneuvered into a hovering position above the crowd.

If the stunt brought uncertain expressions to more than a few of the patrons who watched the dancing trio from beneath the mammoth platform’s transparent base, it seemed the most startling proof yet that Estefan’s physical traumas, and the fears they must have engendered in her, are a thing of the past.

Estefan’s Southern California swing continues with shows tonight at the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa and next Friday and July 27 at the Forum.