Between the Venice Biennale, the Met Gala, and now Frieze New York, the last fortnight has kept the art world booked and busy. While the concurrent openings of Frieze, NADA, and Esther art fairs may have sent some into a tizzy across West Chelsea on Wednesday evening, a few were happily spirited far from the chaos—courtesy of Christian Louboutin and artist Malú dalla Piccola.
After collecting a signature Louboutin red-hued entry ticket from the United Palace box office, guests gathered in the elaborate lobby of the Washington Heights theater. There, the group sipped Ruinart’s Blanc de Blancs from crystal Champagne flutes while eagerly awaiting the premiere of Table Talk; a four-act performance piece created by dalla Piccola. Aside from promising to surprise and subvert, details on what the evening had in store remained under lock and key.
As call time approached, the theater doors opened to reveal the makings of a night in line with the Surrealist dinner parties of a bygone era. Guests ascended to the stage to find their places at the candlelit table, as dancer Madi Tanguay performed a wistful ballet solo in scarlet pointe shoes. It was a sight fit to make Leonor Fini—the Louboutin muse, Surrealist painter, and gardienne of the theatrical dinner party scene in Post-War Paris—proud.
Dalla Piccola, who is seven months pregnant, enlisted her friend and collaborator Ekaterina Scherbakova in co-creating and executing the work. “I always dreamed of doing a performance while pregnant, and this was the perfect occasion,” she told Vogue. With The Red Shoes—the 1948 film starring Moira Shearer as an aspiring ballerina tragically captivated by the allure of a pair of red pointe shoes—serving as inspiration, the piece placed the audience at the center of an exploration of surveillance, maternity, and the uncanny. “For me,” added Scherbakova, “this is a performance about desire and power that are interconnected.”
Once on stage, guests “Ooh-ed” and “Ah-ed” at the sight of an elaborately plated oeuf à la coque au caviar. “I feel like I’m seated at The Dinner Party,” remarked Met Trustee and guest Robert Denning, referencing Judy Chicago’s seminal multi-media installation on view at the Brooklyn Museum. Before long, guests found themselves on camera in a continuously evolving role of subject and spectator as the four acts of Table Talk unfolded.
There was an undeniable theatricality to the four-course menu created by Piccola and Chef and food stylist Thu Pham Buser. The scallop crudo was served atop 18-inch-thick ice blocks—and its tableside presentation was a performance in and of itself. Buser’s pork, chicken, and duck mousse pâté en croúte, meanwhile, was almost comically large—and took three days to prepare for the occasion.
Between courses, talk invariably returned to the art world’s goings-on: the impending opening of TEFAF, tales of traversing the pavilions of the Venice Biennale, and the mammoth feat of the Met’s current exhibition on the Renaissance master Raphael.
For the final act of Table Talk, Tanguay returned, this time with the table itself as her stage. Having swapped out her pointe shoes for Louboutin’s lace-up satin ballet flats, she captivated dinner guests with a mournful final solo. Before the curtain fell on the unforgettable evening, dalla Piccola had one final reflection to offer: “In New York, what drives inspiration is all the people, because there’s this energy that you cannot find in Paris, where everything is possible. Look at this.”
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Young Emperors
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Sabine Getty
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Ahn Dong
