Contact Comes to MUPA

Contact premiered at New York's Lincoln Center in 1999 and moved to the Vivian Beaumont Theatre in 2000. In the same year, it won a Tony Award for the Best Musical, while its creator, Susan Stroman, took a Tony for Best Choreography.

 

 The piece is made up of three dance plays. It features classical works such as Tchaikovsky's Onegin and Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite as well as hits by Stephane Grappelli, Robert Palmer and the Beach Boys, among others.  

Part One, Swinging, is inspired by a Rococo painting by Fragonard in which a servant and his master vie for the affection of a young lady longing.

Part two, Did you move?, is set at an elegant Italian restaurant in New York, in the 1950's.  The heroine is the wife of a Mafioso, who escapes her empty marriage into the world of imagination.

Part three, Contact, speaks about the human desire to belong in the language of dance. It is about a successful advertising executive in Manhattan who, at a turning point in his life, suddenly realises how empty and vain the pursuit of success is if there is no one with whom to share the rewards of his work.