With the characters in the Victorian formalwear that is de rigueur in Leontes's court, which is deployed against a backdrop of panels that are alternately solid burgundy and painted with figures in Renaissance style, the whole tableau is deepened by a back wall lighted an elegant blue.
Against this backdrop, a dynamic panel of individuals from the worlds of technology, business, publishing and design joined a live discussion on the role technology could play in shaping our future.
Nichols offered a statistical backdrop for the panel's discussion: 42 million Americans uninsured, another 40 million under-insured, about 16% of the nation's GDP spent on health care.
And Mr. Kylian's use of projected shadows and a paneled backdrop through which the dancers endlessly disappear and re-enter to diminishing effect, has the look of handy extraneous gimmickry.
Trees are evoked by aqua leaves and black branchlike lines floating on a backdrop and a smaller panel in front.
These alarming figures will form the backdrop to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change talks in Geneva this month, when scientists will start to outline ways to implement the climate goals set in Paris.
For this complex yet beguiling romp, Mr. Winters designed a backdrop showing 24 separate panels, each adorned with its own lines and squiggles.
This imagination bursts forth in song (original numbers by Mr. Kelly and Carol Lipnik, which tend toward the heavily rhymed, and covers, including a gorgeously intimate take on Monteverdi) and in a three-panel video backdrop.
Hung on a crude vinyl backdrop, the mounted chenille-stem panels look like puzzle parts.
Giant roses as surface decoration were the story from Viktor & Rolf, whose obsession with black and white included a catwalk suggesting oversize wooded floor panels and a backdrop of wilting sunflowers.
