Next Thursday night in Paris, after the final show on the haute couture schedule has ended, an altogether different show will take place at the Louvre. Jordan Roth will present “Radical Acts of Unrelenting Beauty,” a cycle of three live performances in which he uses fashion as a conduit for his impressions of the world’s largest museum.

It is a first-ever moment for Roth, whose fearless embrace of outré style and affable theatricality have gone a long way towards building a persona beyond his career as an acclaimed Broadway producer and philanthropy-focused impresario. To him, this “narrative fashion performance” doesn’t represent a reinvention so much as an evolution; he describes it as “an artistic practice that is synthesizing so much of my professional, creative and emotional life so far.” With the support of six dancers and music by Thomas Roussel, he is part of the larger programming for La Nuit de la Mode, an evening that marks the last celebration of the blockbuster “Louvre Couture” exhibition (even though it runs through late August).

We have found each other in a remote wing of the building, inaccessible from the museum, where we will be joined by Laurence des Cars, director of the Louvre since 2021. Roth will spend the next week rehearsing, but has arrived at our meeting dressed très chic in a Dries Van Noten ivory top with sculptural pleating, a black straight skirt and pointed heels from Saint Laurent, and a small bag adorned with a Claude Lalanne bronze flower.

So, what to expect? “We are taking static, solid icons and exploring them through fabric and emotion and movement, which is the vocabulary of fashion,” Roth says. “Clothes speak very loudly to my body and tell me how they want to be moved.”

Consider how most of us visiting the Louvre will find ourselves enthralled by any number of ancient artefacts and masterpieces, or else the architecture itself. Roth has transposed all of this into three themes—“Red,” “Wings,” and “Pyramid”—and translated those themes into digital images, to be projected onto white garments of his own design.

“Red” is centered around John Galliano’s empress gown from the Christian Dior spring 2005 collection, currently displayed in the Napoleon III apartments as part of the exhibition. “Wings” entails some 50 wings from across the collections—from the obvious Winged Victory of Samothrace and Raphael’s depiction of Saint Michael to small Egyptian amulets. “Pyramid” takes a cue from the changing sky above I.M. Pei’s glass pyramid structure, as well as painted skies by the likes of Andrea Mantegna and Hubert Robert.