Rococo Rouge
Opening Night: September 9, 2014
Closing: November 1, 2014
Theater: XIV
Join the extraordinary artists of Company XIV as they entertain you in their new Manhattan home, an intimate theatre-lounge space in NoHo. With their latest production, Rococo Rouge, Company XIV invites you to enjoy a titillating evening of decadent divertissement, featuring opera divas, can-can girls, dancing boys, live music, circus, ballet, burlesque, and much more. Sip a delicious cocktail whilst you experience a thrillingly unique fusion of nightlife and theatre.
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September 28, 2014
In the scant eight years since director/choreographer Austin McCormick began recruiting his assemblage of classical dancers, actors, operatic vocalists and circus artists, Company XIV has become one of New York’s most consistently intriguing and enticing stage troupes. Though McCormick has taken inspiration for his evocative pieces from such diverse sources as the works of Charles Bukowski, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and The Brothers Grimm, the company’s artistic spirit has continually been influenced by the more erotic side of the Baroque period during the reign of France’s Louis XIV. They’ve been nomadic since Hurricane Sandy damaged their Brooklyn venue, but with their newest production, Rococo Rouge, Company XIV has settled into an inviting new home, appropriately on Lafayette Street. The Bar at XIV is an intimate lounge that’s open to the general public for cocktails, decorated to suggest the company’s taste for 17th Century sensuality. That style continues in the performance space, a plush, jewel box cabaret room with tiered tables. The show itself is a delightful sampler of dances and specialty routines, performed by scantily-clad men and women who elegantly undulate to an eclectic mix of music that includes both period pieces and more contemporary fare arranged in a unifying style.
READ THE REVIEWSeptember 21, 2014
Mae West, the sage and sybarite from Brooklyn, used to say, “Let joy be unrefined,” a point of view that also suits Austin McCormick, artistic director and choreographer of Company XIV. His latest extravaganza Rococo Rouge retools the roisterous risk-taking revelry he’s known for: bare skin, sultry ballet, baroque flourishes, burlesque, and gender-bending. Our first experience with Company XIV was last year’s Nutcracker Rouge, a bawdy reimagining of the Nutcracker ballet, many elements of which we found to be problematic. It’s happy reporting that the same isn’t true for their new spectacle; unburdened by things like story and dramatic arcs, the current production dazzles as modern burlesque, straightforward in its structure—one number follows another—and splendid in its execution. Creating a steamy vibe right from the start, Rococo Rouge conjures the aspects of human sensuality, from traditionally romantic to aggressively transgressive, with stops in between for addictive, playful, or regretful. Taking a cue from the disparate acts of vaudeville, McCormick includes grand opera, Beyonce’s disco pop, a tarantella, Edith Piaf classics, aerial acts, choreographed routines, and suggestive sex.
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September 21, 2014
Ah, burlesque. This art form has slowly moved its way into the mainstream in America, though it’s never quite held the sway that it has in Europe. Raunchy, naughty fun certainly isn’t the issue. Vaudeville — a distinct but related bit of silliness — has its share of ribaldry. And across the street from this new venue XIV is Bridget Everett currently receiving raves for her out-there night of cabaret called Rock Bottom. So what to make of Rococo Rouge, the new offering from Company XIV, which makes much of its hedonistic namesake Louis XIV by mixing in snatches of opera amidst its pop songs and circus-like turns? Downtown spaces like The Slipper Room and The Box have hosted far more envelope-pushing nights of burlesque. Acts like La Soiree have featured far more elaborate shows in bigger spaces. And the polished professionalism of Moulin Rouge (echoed in its way by the squeaky clean Rockettes) is family friendly fare with top-notch talent. Rococo Rouge is not quite any of these. It’s in an intimate space which is not lavish enough to call upscale and not trashy enough to make you feel edgy. The humor and stunts on display wouldn’t offend your grandmother. But it’s not up to the precision heights of Moulin Rouge’s guys and gals either. Nor are the stunts of the Cirque Du Soleil quality either. The result is neither fish nor fowl and something seemingly designed for an audience that doesn’t quite exist.
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October 15, 2014
If you were a prudish sort, not much given to bacchanals, the curtain stretched across the stage might be your first clue that XIV, an intimate new theater in the East Village, was not the place for you. The orgiastic Moulin Rouge revelry painted there is fair warning of what lies ahead in Company XIV’s glitteringly sexy, exuberantly celebratory show Rococo Rouge — minus the genitalia open to the breeze. In this opulently designed, high-glamour fusion of opera and circus, ballet and fan dance, the men prefer jeweled codpieces, the women assorted skimpy, spangly underthings. Also the occasional long, elegant gown. Conceived, directed and choreographed by Company XIV’s artistic director, Austin McCormick, and gorgeously lit by Jeanette Yew, it has more than a dozen varied numbers and a fashion parade of costumes by Zane Pihlstrom. Audience members sip cocktails as they watch. “You’re in for an evening of nakedity and debauchery,” the amped-up hostess, Shelly Watson, says, clad in a deranged golden ensemble topped by a towering Marie Antoinette-style wig with a bird cage inside. Extravagant, disciplined decadence is this show’s comfort zone.
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