In Red Carpet, a spine-shivering performance by the Paris Opera Ballet, the audience is invited to the sort of dance party that goes on till dawn in smoky nightclubs.
That sense of after-hours abandon took shape when Cal Performances presented the North American premiere of Hofesh Shechter’s work on Thursday, Oct. 2. The evening was manic, self-amused and sublime. As the dancers powered into action at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall, it became clear almost anything that could happen would in this 65-minute piece.
A huge chandelier loomed and descended from above, evoking Broadway’s The Phantom of the Opera. Tom Visser’s lighting, characterized by long spears and color washes, was rock show worthy. With costumes by Chanel no less, the Paris Opera Ballet’s ensemble of 13 dancers dressed to kill — if a woman wore a sleek ball gown she also performed in bare feet.
What wove it all together was the feverish imagination of Shechter, who was responsible for the choreography, music and set design. With an amplified four-person jazz/rock combo pulsing away on an upstage platform, the prodigious dancers stomped, flexed their torsos in unison and struck fleeting Bob Fosse poses. Their moves were silky and strutting, semaphoric and simian, bringing Mummenschanz, Moulin Rouge, and MTV to mind. What a fusion it was.
Was it kitschy and silly sometimes? Sure, that too. And all of it was excitingly unpredictable to watch.
Darting through bright white and colored light and layered shadows, the dancers formed long chorus lines, trotting folk-dance circles and big blossoms, arms fluttering like wind-touched petals. They folded inward to depict blobs of human protozoa throbbing with new life, leapt high into the air and trudged in place as if on an endless journey. At one point they resembled a nest of squirming puppies.
If the celebrated neoclassical choreographer George Balanchine had gone on an LSD trip, this is what might have happened.
And then, suddenly, it was over. Or that part was, at least. The music downshifted into a modern chant-like solemnity. The unlit armature of the chandelier now resembling some spindly sacred totem slowly descended. The dancers raised their arms in ways that invoked classical Indian dance forms. Were they worshipping? Fearful? Both or neither?
After a musical interlude that offered the dancers a breather and time for a costume change, five dancers performed a haunting chamber piece in front of the curtain. Dressed in pallid skin-tight costumes, staring vacantly into the house with their hands joined, they looked like fragile paper dolls. When they let go of each other and began to move, one of the dancers swooned and sunk into the arms of the others. A beautifully fluid passage of suffering and solace ensued.
Red Carpet, which runs through Saturday, Oct. 4, created a moving idyll of contemplation here, before the party resumed with a witty evocation of an ancient Greek frieze that soon restarted the show’s revving engine.
The evening included some bravura break dancing and Broadway sizzle. One dancer in a bristling black mohawk broke free in a furious solo that became such a desperate search for escape he tried to climb the elevated bandstand.
If none of this was what audiences expected from the esteemed Paris Opera Ballet, they had the distinct pleasure of witnessing these remarkable dancers in an ecstatic night off from classical ballet. The ensemble carried off everything in Shechter’s demanding choreography, flinging their bodies airborne, magnetically drawn to each other in nurturing huddles or going still as statues.
They also looked like they were having a helluva good time.
There were no celebrity interviews on this Red Carpet. The closest thing to a star was that chandelier, which appeared at one point as a spare, unlit god and at another as a gleaming spaceship rimmed with lights.
The finale was a kind of disappearing act, as the performers drifted upstage into Visser’s dark amber light. It was as if they were gathering their forces for some fresh astonishment.
Steven Winn is a freelance writer. This article has been provided in partnership with San Francisco Chronicle.
