New Georges and The Movement Theatre Company invite you to The Harriet Holland Social Club Presents The 84th Annual Star-Burst Cotillion in the Grand Ballroom of The Renaissance Hotel. It’s the Black high society event of the year.
As six high-achieving debutantes interrupt their preparations to peek into the shimmering ballroom, The Harriet Holland Social Club’s esteemed Madam President does her damnedest to ensure it all goes well. She needs no stumbles tonight. No teary-eyed smudges, no unraveling lace, no unraveling ANYTHING. Because if she can’t control these girls, whatever will they think over at Table 4?
Experienced as a Black debutante ball in a large American city in real time—and featuring an all-Black-women company and creative team, down to its three-piece band—The Cotillion interrogates the complexities of Black debutante ball culture and finds that beneath all the respectability politics and sweet serenades lie contradictions even quality make-up can’t cover up. It puts us all in our evening shoes—ya know, those fancy ones that start to pinch as the night wears on—to ask how we choose to uplift young Black women in a world that seeks to diminish them.
