For this year’s M.C.A. Performance Gala, which honored choreographer Bill T. Jones on April 9, roughly 275 guests paid $300 to $500 a ticket for an evening that involved a dance performance by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company on the museum’s stage, then dinner with the dancers in its upstairs atrium. According to Gina Crowley, the museum’s director of special events and rentals, “The gala serves as a great introduction to the M.C.A. and its theater programs. Guests see the museum full of elegance.”
Crowley commissioned Event Creative production designer Lional Rivero to create a visual environment for the preperformance cocktail reception and the postshow dinner that would reflect the evening’s performance “while staying within a very conservative budget,” Crowley noted. To inspire her choices for the evening’s look, Rivero popped in a DVD of the piece that would headline the evening: Chapel/Chapter, which tells the story of three gruesome crimes—ranging from murder to child abuse—through music, dance, and dialogue.In Chapel/Chapter, dancers sport orange jumpsuits meant to represent prison garb. So Rivero covered 26 dinner tables (set in the museum’s atriums) with similarly hued linens. For florals, she tucked orange orchids and red tulips into fishbowl-shaped glasses; the stems bent along the glassware’s circular edges in a way that evoked the dancers’ movements. The sinuous orchid-and-tulip arrangements topped highboys at the cocktail reception before the show (held in the lobby outside the museum’s street-level theater) and decorated the dinner tables upstairs.
The main element of the Chapel/Chapter set is a grid of 10 squares made of lit-up white plexiglass, and the shape (and material) made several cameos in the gala’s decor. During the cocktail reception, staffers from J&L Catering circulated with hors d’oeuvres on square trays made of black plexiglass, and uplit plexiglass squares formed the dinner-table centerpieces.
The event raised more than $130,000 for the M.C.A. performance program.
Crowley commissioned Event Creative production designer Lional Rivero to create a visual environment for the preperformance cocktail reception and the postshow dinner that would reflect the evening’s performance “while staying within a very conservative budget,” Crowley noted. To inspire her choices for the evening’s look, Rivero popped in a DVD of the piece that would headline the evening: Chapel/Chapter, which tells the story of three gruesome crimes—ranging from murder to child abuse—through music, dance, and dialogue.In Chapel/Chapter, dancers sport orange jumpsuits meant to represent prison garb. So Rivero covered 26 dinner tables (set in the museum’s atriums) with similarly hued linens. For florals, she tucked orange orchids and red tulips into fishbowl-shaped glasses; the stems bent along the glassware’s circular edges in a way that evoked the dancers’ movements. The sinuous orchid-and-tulip arrangements topped highboys at the cocktail reception before the show (held in the lobby outside the museum’s street-level theater) and decorated the dinner tables upstairs.
The main element of the Chapel/Chapter set is a grid of 10 squares made of lit-up white plexiglass, and the shape (and material) made several cameos in the gala’s decor. During the cocktail reception, staffers from J&L Catering circulated with hors d’oeuvres on square trays made of black plexiglass, and uplit plexiglass squares formed the dinner-table centerpieces.
The event raised more than $130,000 for the M.C.A. performance program.
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane dancers performed Chapel/Chapter.
Photo: Paul B. Goode
Bill T. Jones's partner, Bjorn Amelan, designed the Chapel/Chapter set, which inspired event designer Lional Rivero.
Photo: Paul B. Goode
Rivero translated the orange hues and white squares from the Chapel/Chapter set into the decor scheme for the gala.
Photo: Paul B. Goode
The crime-centric story of Chapel/Chapter unfolds on a grid of 10 lit-up plexiglass squares.
Photo: Paul B. Goode
The illuminated grid on which the dancers performed inspired the enterpieces at each dinner table. The flowers' bent stems echoed the movements of the performers.
Photo: Paul B. Goode
Event Creative set up 13 tables in each of the museum's two atriums.
Photo: Paul B. Goode
