Knotted Glamour

"A title," says Hofesh Shechter, "is like the keyhole through which you peer and guess what a piece will look like." His latest creation is called Red Carpet and is the first commission he has received from the Paris Opera. So everyone was looking for the red carpet on stage. In vain. Because the knotted glamour symbol of royalty, Hollywood galas, festivals and the like was by no means rolled out in the proscenium. It hung vertically, in the shape of the venerable curtain at the Palais Garnier, initially illuminated in bright red. Over the course of the performance, it performed a subtle up-and-down motion, as if Shechter wanted to wink at us, which he explains in the program: "I have to be able to fall in love with the titles of my pieces."

The actual red carpet lay between the velvet-red ...