by Leigh Witchel
Headlined by New York City Ballet principal dancer Taylor Stanley, Christopher Williams’ group went into The Joyce Theater during Pride Week with a group of dances inspired by Vaslav Nijinsky and the Ballets Russes, reimagined as all-male. Williams’ calling card is his striking, risqué visual imagination; the results were sometimes fascinating and always thought-provoking. But what lingered were bigger questions.
His version of “The Afternoon of a Faun” used a corps of male naiads sporting flowered headbands, who began hunched over. Stanley entered in costume designer Andrew Jordan’s take on Nijinsky’s faun: dappled tights, ram’s horns and a small tail. Williams’ idea of antique movement, like Nijinsky’s, is in the One Grecian Urn school: Stanley made flattened poses as the Debussy began. When he moved more, he augmented the plastique with curved arms and stag leaps.
The men got up with a contraction and looked blankly at us like erotic dolls. Joshua Harriette, as the Chief of the Nymphs, began to dance with Stanley; one lifted the other, then they switched.
Like many works to Debussy’s tonal washes, especially recorded Debussy, the work felt becalmed. There was enough going on, including the costumes, to take time before concentrating on Stanley. He’s capable of blowing up a dance, but that wasn’t happening here. It felt like a placid collection of poses, and then Williams dropped a tragic ending on us at the last moment like a Hemingway novel, and his “Faun” went from not radical enough to trying too hard.
More than anything else, the excerpts from “Daphnis & Chloé” recalled Martha Graham: Greek myths, contractions and a scantily clad hero. Harriette played Daphnis in briefs, and a small band round his chest. He rotated, collapsing in attitude.
Three other creatures, all completely shrouded in black (including the only female performer), lay at the back corner throughout his dancing. They occasionally stirred but finally got up. Daphnis reached, ran off and that was that.
When the lights came back on the trio did a slow, short and atmospheric dance of tilting and posing. It also abruptly concluded with a blackout. Without any set through the evening, lighting designer Joe Levasseur didn’t have a lot to work with, but he managed some atmospheric effects; here a dim blue light. Still, it’s not a good idea to do bleeding chunks at The Joyce and these hadn’t even been cauterized.
The score for “Narcissus,” by Nikolai Tcherepnin, was originally choreographed in 1911 by Michel Fokine. Again, we only saw a portion of Williams’ full evening work, but a more substantial one.
“Narcissus” was driven by Williams’ taste for the fantastical. Mac Twining entered as Echo wearing a unitard with breasts and a long curled penis that looked like an umbilical cord. As well as Vulcan ears. It was over-over-the-top, but these are the kind of visual provocations we hope for from Williams.
Twining stood, moved his arms and fluttered his hands. Stanley and Cemiyon Barber entered in costumes with an ancient Greek silhouette but in salt-water taffy colors: skirts, harnesses and headdresses. Pacing and posing as the cyclorama immolated like a sunset, they mirrored one another as Narcissus and his reflection. They lay down and stared, then were still.
“Les Sylphides” was the most substantial work choreographically, and the one that justified Stanley’s inclusion. He more than guest-starred; he was a necessary collaborator.
The curtain opened during intermission as we were still sitting. Twining, his hair long-ish and curled, came onstage as the work’s Poet, reading and writing in his notebook with a quill pen. His costume was a riff on the traditional one from the Fokine, only more deshabillé: Black vest but no shirt, cream palazzo pants and a long white ribbon.
The music began and he moved into a polonaise. The arms were from 19th century lithographs, the steps simplified ballet. The vocabulary and shapes Williams started with felt like affectionate references, but more imitative than synthesized.
Stanley entered bare-chested and barefooted, in a brown skirt and crown. The delicacy and detail he moved with was a whisper that shouted. He’s one of the best classical stylists around; his arm and upper body work is extraordinary – one of the few male dancers for whom beautiful is the right word. Later on, he launched into a solo with curling arms and turns that moved into a delicate fouetté. He knew how to frame a pose in sharp focus, yet didn’t freeze or stop moving. It was as if he brought etchings of Marie Taglioni to life. If anyone could give this conceit potency, he was the one.
Williams echoed Romantic lithographs, arms en couronne, heads tilted to glance under the arms. The costume had a witty reference: the sylph wings were not on their back, but were wristlets that were used actively to not just flap, but make noise. Choreographically, Williams switched things up by breaking the symmetry of the formations.
A slow section was danced in smoke and side-lighting. Williams gradually and imaginatively deployed more men gathering in the smoke with each repetition. The corps dancing was vibrant: spiraling, crossing lines, swirling with energy. However, the men’s facility was variable; there were tabletop arabesques on the stage, and putting Stanley in front of them emphasized when they weren’t at his level.
The men formed a drooping chorus, tilting with arms en haut. The imitation was a pastry with many layers; Williams was looking at the source materials from Romantic ballet, and Fokine’s ballet, which was an homage to Romantic ballet, and making an homage to both. During the waltz, the men echoed Stanley. He was in his element with the small detailed jumps and the style – but his range is broad.
The Poet left the sylphs to dance; a few at a time rotated out. The addition and reduction in numbers felt like an echo from “La Bayadère.” When he returned with a slow walk on the diagonal against the waves of the corps (another echo, this time from classic modern dance, Paul Taylor’s “Arden Court”) Twining came to Stanley, supported him in arabesque, and brought him to center as Stanley tilted his head delicately, modestly back.
As the ballet romped towards its close, the corp moved side to side flapping their wristlets, then making an antic head tilt right on the music. It was done deadpan, but more likely Williams was kidding us. Another clue of the humor was when the men flapped their wings, again, right on the music. Finally Stanley took Twining in his arms and dipped him, whirled off his pants and ran off with him. As welcome as the parity in support was, the surprise ending felt like “La Sylphide” with a forced punchline.
The ballerina fantasy moments in the evening were the least compelling; we have the Trocks for that. Stanley’s ability to phrase and shape his upper body has no gender; it’s beauty, pure and simple. At the same time, in one of the most gender-typed dance forms, was he imitating femininity or claiming the right to be beautiful in any way he might arrive at it? The synthesis felt incomplete.
Williams wasn’t just going retro with century-old source material, but with echoes of a century-old attitude to homosexuality. The mournful reality for gay men 100 years ago seemed to color the edges of the works, echoing “Teleny,” or E.M. Forster’s “Maurice”: The love that dare not speak its name. There was a reason besides shame: homosexuality was decriminalized in England in 1967 and in the U.S. federally in 2003. For now.
The partnering, even when the men switched off and Stanley partnered Twining or Hariette, reinforced the idea of binary roles: the man lifts and the woman gets lifted. Stanley or his partner functioning as a woman neatly slotted into the late 19th century idea of homosexuals as inverts.
Some of these dances were originally mixed cast; Williams recreated them as all-male and the performance was promoted as a pride celebration. Still, this gave the dances a feeling of the gathering of a gay male community not just in celebration, but a circling of the wagons in protection. Yet against whom? In an all-male concert where the only female dancer was completely covered so that she was invisible, it’s hard to avoid an uncomfortable echo of a boy’s club as when Diaghilev groused that Balanchine had “a morbid interest in women.”
Williams’ background isn’t classical ballet and it’s not entirely fair to use him to address a systemic issue in it, but given his source material, it’s an apt time to bring it up: The only place women have robust opportunities in ballet is in performance. Not in creation and certainly not in its power structure. Asking to do traditionally women’s parts is liberating for some, but can we at least acknowledge that street is only going one way? Historically, the Trocks used women in men’s parts. That was dropped early on, assumedly because of the physical mass required to partner. But generally, women in ballet have been left out of any attempt to expand gender typing. As for trans folk, compared to those assigned male at birth, those assigned female have made even fewer inroads. What’s in it for them?
Williams’ rococo imagination gives him a unique voice, and gave us the opportunity to see Stanley used in roles that challenged and extended him rather than just in a guesting gig. But sometimes what you claim or reclaim might be something you’re taking from someone else. There’s a lot to be said for a vision of inclusion in ballet that includes women.
copyright ©2022 by Leigh Witchel
“The Afternoon of a Faun,” “Daphnis & Chloé” (excerpts),” “Narcissus”(excerpts), “Les Sylphides” – Christopher Williams Dances
The Joyce Theater, New York, NY
June 28, 2022
Cover: Taylor Stanley and Mac Twining (reclining in front) in “Les Sylphides.” Photo credit © Paula Court.
Got something to say about this? Sound off here
[Don’t miss a thing! We’ll send you a notification of every article we post if you sign up with your email. (The signup is right below, scroll down). We promise you won’t be deluged and we won’t spam you either.]
