Dark Design: Le Poisson Rouge

View Gallery Everyone loves red when it comes to a nightspot. It’s even more appealing when you roll over the visual imagery while pronouncing the perfect-sounding French word to describe it: “rouge.” The Moulin Rouge, of course, inspired the great underground graphic art by Toulouse Lautrec, where in the seedy dark underbelly of the cabaret smoke and dinge, the artist captured a whole universe of culture, or rather, sub-culture. Now the Moulin Rouge is just a tourist trap in the “red”-light district of Paris, while Le Poisson Rouge, a new music cabaret on Bleecker Street (see gallery), starts from the beginning and swims back to those late 19th-century Parisian nights.

One of the great mediators of deep communication roots itself through thoughtful, complicated music. Le Poisson Rouge is all about the music. As such, and as it relates to the spatial layout, the founders have looked to create a flexible space that allows for the improvisation of a Charlie Parker sax performance. “Seating, standing, in-the-round”—as well as mulling, loitering, and dithering, we hope—will all be encouraged, as partitions, screens, seats, and stools continuously change location in order to maximize client interaction and spatial misdirection. Yet the performance stage dares to draw the minimized attention spans of today’s party-goers, as quality artistry will always be on display.

Does this also mean the space will encourage the kind of over-the-top revelry seen in the dirty days of the original cabarets? Is art displayed onstage in order to encourage smart banter in the adjacent lounge? As conversation might spill out into the streets after a great theater performance, it seems the quiet couches of the lounge will allow for critical analysis of the performances, as well as a few tasty drinks. Indeed, the headiness of a closely seated performance is always greatly balanced afterward with the lizard luxury of a soft sofa and a hard beverage.

Throughout, red paint, combined with fleur-de-lis-like stencils, are a kind of pastiche postmodern trick to get the mind moving back in history and space. There’s real intent in juxtaposing the creative designs of Carlos Andrade’s colors, designs, and neo-Baroque furniture with the hard and economical edge of concrete and slat floors. One soaks up the memories of the performances in a space that no longer exists, a simulacrum of the 9th arrondissement and the Bleecker Street music blur of the Village Gate. Dancing history is written on the elevated center floor (“an acoustic accoutrement,” says founder David Handler), a last remnant of the more drug-infused and less soulful times of “Life,” the venue’s last incarnation.

Permeating the matte material imagery is a counter from the high tech of the sound- and light-infused performance space, engineered by John Storyk/WSDG, the man behind Electric Lady Studios. Complexity and contradiction coax the mind to think. Founding partners Justin Kantor and Handler have founded a space ready to motivate creativity: “Our vision was to establish the ultimate symbiosis of art and revelry.” It remains to be seen whether a Toulouse Lautrec or two will emerge from this submerged spectacle.

Dark Design explores nightlife spaces through the art of human aesthetics.