Garth Grimball
The best part of Red Carpet is the first 90 seconds. Luscious red curtains absorb lighting that yellows and greens the fabric, inviting a slanted view of a familiar opening. The curtains part to reveal an imperial chandelier under which dancers decked out in the sumptuous jewel tones of Chanel are already dancing. Before you can take it all in, a second, upstage curtain parts, and there is a live band. So much glamor and stagecraft packed into 90 seconds. If only the following 58 minutes and 30 seconds delivered on that initial promise.
Hofesh Shechter’s newest work for Paris Opera Ballet opened the CalPerformances 2025–2026 dance season at Zellerbach Hall on October 2. Red Carpet is Shechter’s fourth work to enter the company’s repertory, and as a former Batsheva dancer, his choreography sweats out watered-down Gaga technique. The hour-long dance features an impressive 13 dancer ensemble. Shechter’s score combines a recorded track with live drums, cello, double bass, wind instruments and vocals. Ear plugs were available for use before the performance. The music maintained a bracing volume that perhaps was meant to encourage immersion but instead became monotonously intense.
Red Carpet has very few moments without the entire cast dancing together and even fewer moments when the action isn’t happening center stage. Shechter’s vocabulary is a consistent side-to-side weight shift with either a languid spine or referential gesture on top, sometimes both. The movement is so juicy that it looks enjoyable to embody it, to dance it within a group of fellow comrades-in-maximalism, but it remains predictable to watch as the group shifts between unison or overlapping smaller groups of unison.
There were two solos, woefully short, that disrupt the predictability. Shechter said of Red Carpet that, “Art is about showing your most vulnerable self.” Tom Visser’s lighting design keeps the dancers in constant shadows so there is rarely discernible facial character, but in those brief solos a humanity emerges that is immersive, that allows the movement room to breathe.
Eventually the dancers shed their glamorous designer duds for flesh colored variations on leotards. The choreography settles into a zombie-like walk or a sway, and gestures waver between animalistic and pantomime. The curtains close and open; the lights fade and brighten, teasing an ending that like a grand chandelier is prettier that it is memorable.
Garth Grimball is a dance writer and artist based in Oakland, CA. He is a contributor to SF Examiner and Dance Media. He is the editor of ODC Dance Stories.
“Red Carpet” Is All Style and Volume was originally published in ODC.dance.stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.