Swift, glossy, sometimes feirce, Keigwin + Company whipped through a week at Jacob’s Pillow, leaving audiences elated by a mix of dance, music, costume, light and fog. All the stuff of theater. Larry Keigwin is the choreographer who moved 150 fashion models around the Lincoln Center fountain at Fashion Week last year. He’s worked with ballet stars and Rockettes, an opera company and cabarets; he is staging a revival of “Rent” off Broadway and his company performs at the Joyce, New York City’s theater for modern dance. His work is intense and accessible and, often, funny. If it’s entertaining, he must be saying, it’s good. “Runaway,” opens with a blast of fog across the stage, pierced by floor lights aimed at the audience. A woman, aided by three men, is preparing to go out: One of the fellows holds her mirror as she applies lipstick and mascara. Then she pins her hair flat before donning a huge puffy wig which one of the men sprays generously, and at length. Then darkness, throbbing music, “Thirteen” by Jonathan Melville Pratt, and a club scene materializes with women in wigs and short tight bright dresses, and men, deadpan and barefoot in black suits and pencil ties, strutting, angry looking, some of them, and maybe drugged. It’s a mosaic with shifting pieces: a fleeting and balletic pas de deux followed by a woman running, arms pumping, after a man and jumping on his back, and all the time the dancers pace the floor, soar and turn and pace to the electronic beat. In no time, many have stripped to their underwear, everyone walking fast, women getting caught and running, caught and running. The lights allow dancers to disappear into the back wall and emerge again, and the dancers finish, strutting like models and aloof, through the aisles of the Doris Duke theater. “Love Songs,” is six duets to songs performed by Roy Orbison, Aretha Franklin and Nina Simone. Some of the lovers are witty, some aggrieved, some joyous. These are not all happy loves but they are absorbing. Keigwin + Company opened this show with “Megalopolis.” In quaint futuristic costumes with aerodynamic epaulets, mostly black and showered with sparkles, dancers advanced like Martha Graham figures, in cohorts, jumping flat-footed across the stage. And, as elsewhere, snippets of ballet winked in and out of the high-precision action. Then sweepers cleared the stage of spangles before the next dance: “Bird Watching,” to Haydn’s Symphony No. 6. Men and women in black tutus, fanning their face with jeweled fingers, preening like birds, like models, like dancers, sometime parodying ballet moves. These are strong, charismatic and contained dancers. No showy hyper extentions, here. The women are stocky, the men more willowy, and they all move with speed and strength and beauty. Catch Keigwin + Company when you can. For information on programs at Jacob’s Pillowin Becket, MA, go to jacobspillow.org.This week, through July 3, Carte Blanche performs at the Ted Shawn Theatre and Jane Comfort and Company at the Doris Duke. For tickets, call 413-243-0745.
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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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