Restless and damp: Paris Opera Ballet in Red Carpet

At its best, the work of Israeli-born, British-based Hofesh Shechter is a beguiling mix of pleasure and unrest. New York dancegoers most recently would have encountered his Cave, a pandemic-era work for the Martha Graham Company. But a new evening-length production fizzled like damp fireworks.

Inspired by the opulent, Second Empire-styled Palais Garnier, Shechter’s Red Carpet for Paris Opera Ballet arrived at New York City Center with a knockoff of the chandelier that inspired Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera and acres of red velvet drapery. Costumery by the house of Chanel, boasting a surfeit of sequins for the women and quaint touches like jarretières for the men, some of whom were unaccountably missing trousers, was meant to create the atmosphere of a seedy though upscale nightclub.

Though more modest in size than the Palais Garnier, City Center is just as dizzyingly ornate: a neo-Moorish Mecca temple that was once headquarters to Freemasons of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, long since repurposed as a temple of dance and musical theatre. The transfer from one palace of splendor to another mostly fell flat, though, with no help from a heavy-handed lighting scheme that involved lots of atmospheric fog and sudden drenchings of bright white or crimson light. Patches of striking ensemble choreography could not compensate for the longueurs of improv, or the episodes in which these sleek, powerful dancers would stare blankly out into the house as if searching for a reminder of what comes next.

In one of several tired tropes, the chandelier descended and the dancers circled it as if it were their mothership. In another, one dancer stepped ceremonially out of her evening gown; soon enough they were all wearing nude Spanx and bemused expressions.

The French nevertheless displayed great aplomb in Shechter’s fascinating and restless movement vocabulary. Stylized violence was frequently evoked, as in the exaggerated drawing and release of an invisible bow and arrow, and the formidable and beautiful slashing of arms. But nothing lasted and tension quickly dissipated. We seemed to be witnessing the behavior of a cult, in thrall to musicians who perched above them on a semi-circular platform.

Shechter is credited with the mesmerizing score, along with frequent collaborator Yaron Engler, the commanding drummer and vocalist, whose growling and keening wove a spell over the proceedings, abetted by Marguerite Cox on double bass, Olivier Koundouno on cello and Brice Perda on wind instruments. Middle Eastern chanting dissolved into rock riffs, free jazz and trance. In a captivating scene marked by swift musical transitions, one group of dancers would shred air guitar or hover like albatrosses over the ocean while another would perform a folk-inspired step-together-step-together with arms lifted in supplication. They’d swap out roles when the music shifted idiom.

Punctuating tight, flicking, neurotic gestures, their wrists spiraled with ineffable grace and hands fluttered à la Bob Fosse, suggesting a psychological tic rather than a showbiz greeting. Shechter’s postures often had them crouching or squatting, writhing on the ground en masse, or seated with heads bowed as if in grief. But they also strutted like Fosse dancers in the number ‘Big Spender’ from Sweet Charity, the musical based on the Fellini film Le Notti Di Cabiria. A similar irony pervaded Red Carpet and Sweet Charity: there is no red carpet, there is no charity, only grift and exploitation.

Red Carpet could have been a savage 15-minute commentary on the creepiness of celebrity culture. Or, in our present state of emergency, with a fragile resolution to the hostage crisis in Gaza looming, the sight of stunned individuals being dragged along the floor, and a fine frenzied solo by Loup Marcault-Derouard who seemed desperate to escape some unseen torturer, could have registered as more than brief harrowing elements in a collage without glue.

What’s missing from Red Carpet is the cinematographic quality in Shechter's works like Cave and Political Mother, the latter an audacious, unflinching portrayal of totalitarianism and militarism, in which our eye is drawn to one thing then the next in compelling succession. Whereas a filmed version of Red Carpet, available on Paris Opera’s streaming channel, affords periodic close-ups that highlight poignant or chilling interactions – as when one dancer caused another to quiver by placing a hand on his forehead. There were painterly long shots, too, like a scene of pandemonium that recalls 19th century painter Juan Luna’s ‘Spoliarium’ with the bloodied bodies of slave gladiators being dragged from the Roman Colosseum after a gladiatorial contest. A rare instance of dance that packs a sharper punch in video capture than on the stage.