Blue light, haze, a man tipped back on a bar stool. Then the arms go up and a ring of corseted dancers in red wigs closes in around him. That is how the new music video for Hoops from Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen begins, and it arrived this afternoon with a fresh set of production photographs, hours before Duncan Sheik's musical opens off-Broadway tonight, Thursday, October 15.
The clip runs just over a minute. Cory Jeacoma, who plays Léon, leads the company through the number under hard follow spots, and the camera stays close: fishnets, corsetry, bar stools, faces caught in red and deep blue. The cutting is quick, and the last frame is the show's black-and-white key art.
Producers Kenny Kurokawa, RAYMAN and Antonio Marion put out the video alongside new production photographs by Andy Henderson. They follow the first look released in late September, and this set goes further into the room, with Nkeki Obi-Melekwe as Nana and the company on the show's circular stage.
The video is also on YouTube.
Opening night is at The Night Egg at the Culture Club, 530 West 27th Street, a new venue named after the club in Moyoco Anno's manga. The building was once home to the Twilo nightclub in the 1990s and, later, to Sleep No More.
Sheik wrote the music and lyrics and Leah Nanako Winkler the book. Rob Ashford directs and choreographs, with musical supervision by Or Matias. Anno's manga ran in a magazine from 2013 to 2018, took the Excellence Award at the Japan Media Arts Festival in 2020, and the production bills itself as the first Japanese manga adapted into an American musical in English.
Sophia Anne Caruso plays Colette, a young woman in 20th-century Paris who takes work at a maison close called the Night Egg and starts writing down what its clients confess. Jeacoma's Léon is the childhood love she cannot shake. Marc delaCruz plays Sakae and Drama Desk nominee Jenny Powers is Madame.
Tickets for Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen are on sale for performances through Sunday, January 3, 2027.
