To the music, “Step, step, slide, kick,” teacher chants as her dozen students passé and pivot to a recording of “Dance With Me Tonight,” a bouncy little bass-heavy number recorded by Olly Murs. This is a special Saturday morning dance workshop run by Kristin Altfather, a Rockette invited by the Warner Center for Arts Education in Torrington to give these youngsters a taste of the professional dancing life. They are warming up in the beige honeycomb surrounding the Warner Theatre, in a studio lined with barres and mirrors and filled with early light. Leggy, uncertain, excited, the girls, ages 10 to 16, try to move their hips, their feet, their hands the way Altfather does, aiming for her remarkable strength and theatricality. “Right toe next to left toe,” she orders. “Pull right knee over to the left. Pull hips back. Those inner thighs should be shaking, shaking, working, working.” They are. Altfather runs them through 30 minutes of a killer warmup and then starts teaching the routine. “Anyone know Bob Fosse?” she wants to know. “His work is all about tiny moves by 20 people, very precise. Very effective.” And so it goes for two hours, with Olly Murs all the way. Then Altfather sits her students around her and asks if anyone is aiming for a professional stage career. Anyone? Anyone? Like rockets, hands pop up. Star-struck all, among them one Rachel Traub, 16, — lean, good looking, nice and on-fire ambitious. At age 3 she started dance, quit for a while, missed performing and by age 8 was taking acting and tap class at the Warner Center. Now she is an honor student at Torrington High School, where she attends class daily until noon; gets a lift from her mother to the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts for jazz and tap dance, vocal instruction, music theory and trumpet lessons. Back to the Warner for theater class and play rehearsals, then home, homework and bed at 1 a.m. “I filled out a paper once about what I wanted to do in life, and all I could think of was performing.” Traub was 13 at the time. “As I got older,” Traub told me, “I knew that’s where I belonged.” And this is what thrills the center’s director Isabel Carrington, who instructs on theater here with classes on Stanislavsky, Linklater, Shakespeare and Greek drama. “It’s wonderful to see young people bitten by the bug. It’s a revelation to watch that spark in a young person. “For some,” Carrington says, “this is a second home. A student may get shut in lockers at school, but here they can shine.” More than 500 young people attend the Warner Center for Arts Education throughout the year at tuition running about $200 a class in a 14-week semester. And when financial aid is needed, Carrington and her staff work it out. Now Carrington is not just pushing kids and culture, she’s selling the arts as a way to generate business in downtown Torrington. “This old mill town is struggling to keep business alive. And art is an industry too,” she says, which is why she is working sculpture and painting into the curriculum next. More art, stronger Torrington, she figures. Back at dance class, Altfather is talking to the girls about auditions, about how to dress, about demeanor and attitude. Get there early, she says. Bring food. Bring an appointment book. Bring makeup. Warm up. Try your best. Pay attention. Learn fast and take corrections. Treat auditions like a free dance class. And be nice. Always. Technical ability is one thing. Just as important are attitude and reputation, she tells them. They are impressed. And they are being taken seriously, which is what every young performer wants and what the Warner Theatre’s after-school arts program aims to provide. “And remember,” Altfather tells the class, “You can make a living doing something you love.” For Traub, that was the most important thing Altfather said that morning. “That’s what I wanted to hear.” Rachel Traub will be performing in the Center’s production of “The Beautiful Empire of Ordinary Kings” in the Marine Studio Theatre, May 18-20. For tickets, call 860-489-7180.
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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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