Most dancers know the moment they find a dance bug.for Choreographer Christopher WilliamsGrowing up in Syracuse, it was the first ballet blanc, or “Les Sylphides” performance recognized as a plotless ballet. Mikhail Fokin’s work, first performed in 1909 by Sergei Diaghilev’s influential ballet Russes, represents the sparkling world of young poets meeting Sylph’s group.
Williams has taken that experience for years. As I wrote in the program notes, it was the first ballet he saw.
Creepy, airy, magical, and yes, different-world words: These words are synonymous with Greek mythology, folklore, and Williams’ dance, which dug up the lives of saints. In his debut program at The Joyce Theater, which opened on Tuesday, Williams pays homage to his own awakening of dance. Ballets Russes — Create a new version of “Les Sylphides”.
Williams’ “Les Sylphides” is an overly repetitive and difficult hurdle to overcome with a spiral, seemingly constant movement vocabulary. But when the choreography is less about shaping than feeling, it becomes like a jewel. Indeed, this euphoric “Les Sylphides” is the highlight of the night.
It’s also personal. Like another new Ballets Russes era that revisited his program “Afternoon of a Faun,” Williams added a strange twist to the original. Both are closely related to Vaslav Nijinsky, a sensational dancer who choreographed and starred in the first highly erotic “Faun”. Williams’ reaction is to cast Taylor Stanley, the principal of the talented New York City Ballet. Incredibly accurate, Stanley has the ability to be mysterious without appearing to be trying. Here, he is like a witch in that he brings to life the sculptural poses reminiscent of Nijinsky, but he has his own modern beating heart.
In Chopin’s “Les Sylphydes,” Stanley is an excellent partner for dancer Mac Twinning and has also appeared in excerpts from “Narcissus.” (More excerpts from “Daphnis & Chloé” helped slow down the program. The first half, including part of “Faun”, landed somewhere on the sluggish moon.) First as a poet A diary with a quill while sitting on the edge of the Twinings stage, which you can see writing in — it’s not as terrible as you might think — is the Queen of Sylphs (Stanley), who dominates the tribe of forest fairies. Encounter.
For Sylph, Williams is loosely inspired by Radical Fairy, a counterculture movement in the queer community that lives off the grid. His sylph twists spirally as he enters and exits the formation throughout the stage, reminiscent of Earthstone’s butterflies rushing to darts on dim nights.
Naked breasts adorned with spider-nest veins and delicate wings and a gossamer skirt worn — the costume is by Williams’ talented longtime collaborator Andrew Jordan — these sylphs Their way of life to the poet, with Stanley as the leader, is a good reason for him to undress and join their tribe. Until he keeps pace with the group, they look erotic and seduce him, enthusiastic and kind.
After the nimble dance reaches an enthusiastic pitch — the Sylph’s picket spins faster and faster until it rises and appears to float in the air — a free-filled entanglement is left with Stanley. Together, they plunge into the wings. It’s adorable.
In Debussy’s Afternoon of a Faun, Williams once again collaborates with all male casts to reinvent a sexually charged story featuring Stanley and the nymph chief (Joshua Harriet). The Williams version takes a more sinister tone than the erotic version of Nijinsky, caused by the lines of Mallarmé’s poetry named for the dance. Fawn, as Williams writes, refers to “a kiss that quietly gives a guarantee of betrayal.”
Williams nymphs are more barbaric than usual. His innocent faun has no chance and is eventually eaten up by them. It’s a bit silly — more comical than shocking, like the zombie apocalypse movie scene. There was laughter. However, the “Les Sylphides” sweep nodded to Nijinsky and Isadora Duncan, leading to another kind of laughter born of joy. It wasn’t just Jordan’s fantasy outfits that held the dance together. Dancing.. And that wasn’t the case.
Christopher Williams Dance
Until Sunday at The Joyce Theater joyce.org..