Celine Dion says she is enjoying life in Las Vegas after reducing the ambitious schedule for her Caesars Palace showcase. As a primary investor in the Pure nightclub, she is both a friend and business partner of Andre Agassi.

It doesn't take a celebrity to show how the recent hurricane traumas have tested emotions as well as the borders of citizenship.

But celebrities get more TV time than most of us, and the usually apolitical Celine Dion generated headlines with her Labor Day weekend appearance on a CNN Larry King special. "I'm not thinking with my head, I'm talking with my heart," she said on the air, angry and in tears over the delays in getting aid to Katrina victims.

"There's people still there waiting to be rescued. To me that is not acceptable," she said. "I know they have reasons for it. But I don't want to hear those reasons. ... How can it be so easy to send planes in another country to kill everybody in a second and destroy lives? We need to serve our country."

With a few weeks of perspective on the outburst, the 37-year-old singer now says it was "a buildup inside of me like a volcano.

"I could see the rage inside of me as a mom, as a citizen, as a human being, and couldn't see the changes as fast as I wanted. I couldn't take the pain and couldn't take the images every night and every morning. ... I just couldn't hold it anymore and I just exploded."

"It's not often that I open up and talk this way. Maybe that's why it made an impact," she says.

And the part about service still stands.

Dion and the partners in her Caesars Palace production pledged $1 million in aid to Katrina victims. On the homefront, the singer also plans a rare foray from her Colosseum stage on Saturday to join another cause: Andre Agassi's 10th annual Grand Slam for Children benefit at the MGM Grand Garden arena.

"The main challenge is going to be to take off from one casino to another and change wardrobe as quick as I can," she says of finishing her usual show to join the benefit.

Dion will join the Agassi benefit's most crowded roster to date: Mary J. Blige, Duran Duran, Earth, Wind & Fire, Glenn Frey, George Lopez, Robin Williams and at least one unannounced surprise guest. Some of the performers also will feature backing by music producer David Foster and an orchestra.

"It's not about being nice or generous," Dion said by telephone recently. "I think it's -- how do we say it? -- a responsibility. I don't think it's given to everyone to give a million dollars or build schools for children," as Agassi has with his charter school, the Andre Agassi Preparatory Academy. "But if we are given the opportunity, it's so rewarding to be able to make a difference."

Dion's participation also makes her the rare Las Vegas-based performer at the benefit. She first sang at a "Grand Slam" in 1997, long before "A New Day" debuted in March 2003. Since then, the Canadian superstar has put to rest the notion that she would be a carpetbagger who would "suck up all the oxygen and then fly away," as one unnamed local headliner told Newsweek at the time.

Early reports of her taking a helicopter to work gave way to this late-afternoon telephone interview from a four-wheeled vehicle, as she was being driven from her Lake Las Vegas home to Caesars Palace. "I think when you move to a new city, eventually you will get to know and feel the area," she says. "Especially when you have a young child and you're looking for school, for things to do, for a place to go and play. We want to do activities as a family as well," she says of husband Rene Angelil and 4-year-old Rene-Charles.

There's no denying she and Agassi struck gold on the Strip: Along with Shaquille O'Neal, they're primary investors in Pure, the monstrously successful nightclub at Caesars Palace. "We're dancing on the roof," she says with a laugh, meaning it literally. She treated her entire show cast to a party on the club's outdoor terrace in July.

But she also dedicated an entire performance of "A New Day" to Opportunity Village last year. And her commitment to Agassi's foundation comes from both friendship and her husband-manager's visit to the charter school.

"When he came back he was in tears," she recalls. "He said, 'I can't believe Andre's doing this, and it's as good as any private school.' He was very emotional and impressed by the generosity and talent of this guy."

When it comes to "A New Day," the singer says she "can breathe much more now" after extending the three-year Caesars contract by a year, but cutting down from 200 to about 160 shows each year. "The first year we did 200, it was a little hard for me." The new schedule "gives us a little bit more (time) to recuperate vocally, because every night it's quite a bit."

Venturing from her humidified stage for the World Music Awards last year resulted in a five-show cancellation, thanks to her allergic reaction to a smoke machine. "You can just walk in a corridor and catch a cold because of the air conditioning being too strong," she says.

"You have to be smart as much as you can, but you can't control everything in life. ... I'm not going to be talking about medical things, but it's every day one day at a time."

She does, however, volunteer what is at once a singer's secret and a nickname: "Saline Dion!" she says with a laugh.