Above: Taylor Stanley in Christopher Williams' Les Sylphides
Sunday July 3, 2022 matinee - Celebrating my birthday with my longtime friend Roberto Villanueva at a performance by Christopher Williams Dances at The Joyce.
Back in October 2021, Roberto and I 'discovered' Mr. Williams' work when New York Live Arts presented the choreographer's Narcissus, a re-imagining of the Ballets Russes' production of Narcisse et Echo, and set to the original Nikolai Tcherepnin score (composed in 1911) for Michel Fokine's ballet of the same title, produced by Serge de Diaghilev.
This week at The Joyce, Christopher Williams has been offering a program consisting of his take on two more works associated with the Ballets Russes era: Les Sylphides, in which New York City Ballet principal dancer Taylor Stanley stars as the “Queen of the Sylphs”, and a new version of The Afternoon of a Faun, the 1912 Paris premiere of which - in Nijinsky's original setting - caused one of the great scandals in the history of dance. The program also included the final scene from Narcissus and two brief excerpts from Daphnis et Chloé.
All the works on today's program were given with their original scores - by Debussy, Ravel, Tcherepnin, and Chopin - and featured striking costume designs by Mr. Williams's longtime collaborator Andrew Jordan, and expert lighting by Joe Levasseur.
Mr. Williams' production of Faun opens in silence, with a group of Naiads kneeling; they begin to move in a quiet ritual. The entrance of the faun (Mr. Stanley) causes the action to freeze momentarily. He strikes stylized poses to Debussy's iconic melody for flute. The faun and the principal Naiad (danced by Joshua Harriette) perform an intimate pas de deux, but the ballet does not end as Nijinsky's did: with the faun's masturbatory gesture. Rather, the Naiads devour the intruder. The charismatic Mr. Stanley danced poetically, with a deep sense of commitment.
Mr. Williams' Daphnis et Chloé is a work in progress. The two excerpts shown this afternoon were hauntingly beautiful, though they were not presented in a coherent way; a blackout between "The Prayer of Daphnis" and "Interlude" seemed awkward, and then the audience could not tell if the work was actually over until the dancers began bowing. A better lighting transition would have served the excerpts to advantage.
But the gorgeous sunrise-orange setting of the "Prayer" was very pleasing to behold, and Mr. Harriette as Daphnis made a beautiful impression. The music, which commences in the eerie depths, later takes on an ecstatic quality, with choral passages. Three dancers reclining in shadows on the floor during the "Prayer" reappeared when the lights came back up for "Interlude", their dancing a solemn rite in a silver-blue setting.
I will look forward to seeing Daphnis et Chloé in its entirety in the near future.
In the concluding scene of Narcissus, the boys looked sexy in their revealing costumes. Mac Twining as Echo (above photo), hopelessly in love with Narcissus, has both a fanciful penis and female breasts. Mr. Twining portrayed this tragic character movingly. Meanwhile, the object of Echo's desire, Narcissus, is danced by Mr. Stanley and Cemiyon Barber as the handsome youth and his reflection. They dance as one, so deep is their self-love. Overwhelmed with his own beauty, Mr. Stanley drowns in the pool, leaving behind a white narcissus drawn from beneath his tunic.
After the interval, Les Sylphides began with a stagey mime show wherein the Poet, played by Mr. Twining, wanders about pensively, and then sits on the edge of the stage, writing poetry. He wears white Capri pants and a black vest, with some odd and distracting white ribbons attached. The Sylphs now appear, Mr. Stanley as their queen (wearing a crown), and all of them with wing-like appendages attached to their forearms.
To Chopin's (orchestrated) music, with its frequent repeats, the Sylphs dance with spacious lyricism. Bare-chested and wearing gossamer long tutus, they exude an air of mythic beauty. There's no a trace of drag-queen theatrics to be seen: it's all taken very seriously and is quite magical to watch. At the very end, Mr. Stanley, who has been alternately elusive and enticing as he holds the Poet under his spell, suddenly grasps the white ribbons on the Poet's costume and strips him down to his briefs.
Above: from Christopher Williams' Les Sylphides
~ Oberon