Trisha Brown is known for being a pioneer of post-modern dance, which makes her work sound dry and intellectual. It is anything but. And to celebrate her company’s 40th anniversary, she presented four works at Jacob’s Pillow, works made in the last four decades, that showed humor, beauty and a delicate playfulness. “Les Yeux et l’âme” starts with two couples silhouetted. A third couple joins them and they move at a relaxed, almost stately pace, befitting the Baroque harpsichord piece by Jean-Philippe Rameau. The dancers move with clarity and elegance, with simple lifts, intimate gestures (an arm curled around a partner’s head, just for a moment) or a hand circling on the ground as if drawing in the sand. The dancers were always deliberate and controlled, never off balance. The impulse for a movement was often an arm swinging, or sometimes a partner’s arm that pushed another dancer into motion. There was a sinuous grace and sometimes even intimacy between dancers that was never overtly sexy. The other works on the program, from earlier decades, showed the same easy effortlessness and plotlessness. “Foray Forêt” also starts in silhouette, and also in silence. A faint music begins and gets louder: It’s marching band music, and it moves as if the band itself were marching outside the theater and about to burst through the door. If the circus is passing by, the dancers seem unconcerned. They wear filmy golden costumes — pants or metallic bras and skirts — designed by Robert Rauschenberg. Sometimes the dancers fall into unison, or interact with each other, but there is no story or obvious relationships between dancers. Moments of stillness and simple walking punctuate bursts of elegant movement. Occasionally, the performers would dance with people off stage in the wings. Depending on where in the audience you were sitting, you might have seen a hand or a foot of the offstage dancer. In “Spanish Dance,” five dancers stand in front of the curtain, spread out across the stage. As the music, “Early Morning Rain” sung by Bob Dylan, begins, the first in the line jogs her knees, then starts walking toward the next dancer, as her arm swings and curls like a sleepy flamenco dancer. When she reaches the second dancer, she cozies up behind her and the second dancer begins jogging her knees in sync with the first. The two walk to the third and join with her, and so on, reaching and merging with the last dancer as the song ends. It’s both funny and mesmerizing. “Set and Reset,” from 1983, is one of Brown’s most celebrated works. Rauschenberg designed both costumes and set, the latter consisting of a series of grainy black and white images projected on three geometric screens. The score is by Laurie Anderson — the signature pulsing, driving electronica, with her smooth voice repeating the phrase “long time no see.” The dancers form patterns which instantly dissolve, mixing simple walking or jogging with sinuous rippling or sudden falls. After a summer of complicated, passionate and not always likable dance groups, the Trisha Brown company felt like a cool fragrant breeze. For information on upcoming events at Jacob’s Pillow in Becket, MA, call 413-243-0745, or go to www.jacobspillow.org.
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Greg Fricke and James Boehmer, co-owners of Peggy Mercury in Kent, recently launched their first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts.”
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Fricke and Boehmer are not there to stock their shelves with the same products customers find at standard makeup retailers. They’re there to help customers find what works for them. That usually means asking customers about themselves and learning about their beauty habits, skin, style and the way they like to present themselves. Fricke and Boehmer believe it’s their job to help customers bring out the qualities that suit them and determine what works best for their look.
So much of the Peggy Mercury world is about emboldening people to become more creative, and possibly bolder, versions of themselves. Some of this comes through the store’s creative collaborations with artists, designers and stylists.
It’s part of an ethos that encourages them and their friends to use the shop as a kind of laboratory, trying out new creative experiments without knowing how they might turn out. Whether in fashion, painting, fiber arts or photography, the projects almost always turn out marvelously.
A line of sterling silver charms they sell started as a small project by their friend Nolan Percival. In the beginning, the pieces were for close friends and loved ones. But Boehmer and Fricke encouraged Percival to get a little more serious about the project and create a whole line for the store. Today, it’s one of their top-selling collections.
Classic styles, bold colors, and creative concerts make up the “Imaginary Concerts” line at Peggy Mercury.Provided
“Imaginary Concerts” has the duo taking their own advice.
The project started as a way for Boehmer to connect with his mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Taking old concert shirts from his own collection, Boehmer and his mother began cutting out the graphics with the idea that they would make a quilt together. Unfortunately, she died before they could complete the project in 2025. The pieces, which were ready for production, were put on the back burner as Boehmer and Fricke dealt with their loss and the whirlwind of projects that never seemed to cease at Peggy Mercury.
But the harsh winter of 2026 presented an opportunity to take some time and focus on themselves. Part of that meant revisiting and redefining the concert T-shirt project. This time, instead of looking to the warmth and comfort of a quilt, they turned to another passion — fashion.
Taking a page from their own book, they wanted to create something that felt comfortable to them. They took two disparate loves — one rooted in simple preppy style, with clean lines and classic silhouettes, and the other in the nitty gritty worlds of punk rock and pop — and blended them together to create something entirely new. Pulling from the staples of vintage Brooks Brothers and Charvet collections, they applied the graphic elements with bold stitching reminiscent of punk jackets of the ‘70s and ‘80s, but with a much more sophisticated air.
But the remixing isn’t just the pairing of prep and punk. The pieces are not canon. They take liberties with the realities of concert tours, combining one band’s dates with another band’s logos, mixing them all up until the reality is lost and imagination is the only truth.
Shirts from Peggy Mercury’s first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts,” hang on display.Provided
Adding to the mix is an element of perpetual creativity. Art can be messy, both figuratively and literally, and many of Fricke and Boehmer’s artist friends carry evidence of their work on them at all times. As a nod to these tireless creatives, the duo added haphazard splashes of bright color, giving the line an even more distinctive feel.
For them, “Imaginary Concerts” passes the “Peggy Test.” The mythical Peggy Mercury is a fictional figurehead for the company, a character who thrives on creativity and change. The name, much like the clothing line, is a mixture of interests: Mercury is a planet, a deity and an elusive, transformative element, while Peggy is the wonderfully stylish and boundary-pushing Peggy Guggenheim.
Everything Fricke and Boehmer put in their store has to pass this test: Would Peggy Mercury approve? For their first collection, the answer is a resounding yes.
Peggy Mercury is at 9 Maple St., Unit 2, Kent.
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