|
|
| |
PUPPETRY & DANCE
FALL & WINTER 2005- ISSUE NO. 18
Contents • Editor's Note
| SELECTIONS: |
|
| |
THE (UNUSUAL) WORD MADE
FLESH
by Christopher Williams
Ever since the theme of this issue got out, people have
been giving us excited reviews of the work of young choreographer
Christopher Williams. Dance critics seem to agree. In
The New Yorker (2005/08/08 and 15), Joan Acocella, describing
his Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins, placed him among the
best of the new wave of surrealist choreographers (a
group whose imagery is more ambiguous than the earlier
wave that included Martha Clarke and Pina Bausch).
Williams brings to his work not only his background as
a dancer (he has worked for Tere O'Connor and others),
but as a puppeteer. It was not surprising to learn that
one of his mentors at college was dancer/puppeteer Dan
Hurlin. He has also worked for Basil Twist.
In a recent conversation with Christopher Williams, I
asked him about his reasons for using puppets in his
dances, as well as what he thought were puppets' strengths
relative to flesh-and-blood dancers, and how he saw the
relationship of the puppet to its animator.
In the context of making dances, I see puppets both as
unique entities of their own and more often as possible
extensions of the human dancers' bodies. While both dancers
and puppets have certain limitations in their range of
movement, puppets, in many forms, arguably surpass the
human anatomy in their ability to appear to defy gravity,
to change scale, and to undergo metamorphosis before
the eyes of the viewer, for example. To watch a dancer
perform a solo with a bird puppet hovering around her
may give a scene a more heightened sense of movement
than if she were dancing alone. The bird puppet, while
maintaining its unique identity, has also served to augment
the movements of the dancer's body and provide her with
a charged, dramatic space or context. This occurrence
of the puppet providing the dancer with a heightened
dramatic playing space can also work in reverse. In Virgo
Genitrix, for example, it was the dancers' bodies (with
the addition of prosthetic pregnant bellies) that provided
a kind of human, fleshy proscenium stage for two baby
puppets representing Saint John the Baptist and the Christ
Child leaping in the wombs of their mothers.
In Basil Twist's version of the Ballet Petrushka, he
employed figurative puppet dancers instead of humans
for the three main characters with great success. My
experience with them was that they could perform many
high, gravity-defying leaps and other steps especially
with ease, while turns or spins and other non-frontal
steps proved a bit more difficult (though not impossible)
due to the fact that they were manipulated from behind
by hidden puppeteers. I have not yet explored the possibility
of presenting a figurative dancing puppet against a human
dancer, with the possible exception of a scene from Virgo
Genitrix in which one of the dancers is visited by a
fairy-like archangel Gabriel apparition. The ensuing
duet exploited the strength of the puppet to hover or
fly above her companion, while the dancer could spin
and turn easily on the floor below hers. Puppets can
be built specifically to accomplish one certain effect,
while human dancers constantly strive to push the boundaries
of their ultimately finite movement vocabularies. This
is why, as a choreographer working from a base of innate
love of the living human body in motion, I more often
than not see puppetry as a sensitive way to allow a dancer
to appear to breach the boundary of his own physical
limitations.
The role of puppet to its manipulator depends greatly
upon the approach I am exploring within a particular
work. I try to make nothing arbitrary in this choice.
I employ additional puppeteers (or not) in my dances
in order to most thoroughly flesh out a particular
idea or vision of mine.
In the case of Mandragora Vulgaris, the mandrake root
baby puppets are meant to seem as if they had grown
out of the tangled root garments that the dancers wear.
Here, I specifically wanted to explore the possibilities
of the dancers
themselves fulfilling the role of puppeteer. As a result,
the role of puppeteer to puppet became a metaphor for
the mother to her spawn through parthenogenesis or
some other mysterious and spontaneous form of reproduction.
In this way, the wild woman or Amazon mother to baby
relationship justifies the need for puppets.
In the case of Virgo Genitrix, however, in keeping
with apocryphal legends of the medieval cult of the
three Marys, I was interested in maintaining the strict
illusion that the puppets were separate, supernatural
entities visiting or plaguing the dancers. Six veiled
puppeteers and light curtain techniques were employed
to maintain this effect.
The kind of puppet I choose to employ also has a great
significance for me in each work. In Ursula and the
11,000 Virgins, the choice to include a lamb marionette
in the solo of Saint Agnes was intended to create a
poetic harmony with her early iconography, with her
name's sake, as well as with that of the marionette
itself, whose name comes from its iconographic use to
depict the virgin Mary in early Christian mystery plays.
For me, a certain beauty lies in the flexibility of
the roles of puppets to their manipulators as well as
the multiplicity of puppet forms, and I plan to continue
to challenge this relationship as I create more work.
Describing Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins, Acocella also
praises the costumes and the music, but her final words
are reserved for the choreographer:
P.S. 122 should be congratulated for producing this
show, but " Ursula" deserves to be shown in a larger
theatre, or just a theatre with more seats. The four
performances were completely sold out, with people on
the sidewalk, crying for tickets.
For images and information, visit Christopher Williams's
web site: www.threehandstar.org |
|
|
|
