Recasting Tales of Saints & Sailors

Christopher Williams is a young, sensual, almost feline downtown dancer. At 29, he has already been compared by the Village Voice (twice) to Nijinsky, and his choreography is also beginning to attract considerable buzz. This weekend, at a series of packed concerts at St. Mark’s Church, he seemed determined to show off his new tricks.First up were excerpts from Mr. Williams’s two lives-of-the-saints-vignette cycles: “Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins,” his Bessie-winning piece from last year, and “The Golden Legend,” a work in progress. The most notable thing about these pieces is how fully realized they are. Up in the church balcony was an early music ensemble with singers. The costumes (by Michael Oberle) were as ornate and detailed as the superbly crafted puppets (by Mr. Williams and Eric Wright). And the dancers were uncommonly good: intense, well-trained, well-rehearsed.They were also fearless – which was a good thing, because the dances were deeply, almost aggressively bizarre. In “Saint Christopher,” two men walked onstage in what looked like a giant bear costume. Then they slithered out of it in white monkey suits and started pummeling each other, making guttural noises and shrieks. St. Lucy, who had the stricken face of a martyr at the stake and bloody handprints all over her skirt, was pursued by a mob that shuffled around like a football huddle. St. Anthony Abbot was rushed by a gaggle of crones, who shook little devil dolls at him.Part of the weirdness came from the sounds. Mr. Williams likes to use dancer-generated sound as counterpoint to movement; he’s not afraid to silence his live musicians to make way for a cacophony of thumping limbs and gurgling throats. The raw, guttural sounds make the dances feel irreverent and loose. Yet it’s clear that the choreographer takes his saints seriously: It’s riveting to see St. Lucy’s captors yank on the ropes that bind her, freezing her in Christ-like agony.Agony is one of Mr. Williams’s major interests, and after the intermission, he showcased a world premiere of “The Portuguese Suite,” set to some of the most anguished music there is: the fado ballads of Amalia Rodrigues, that chronicler of bitter heartache. In the Portuguese fado tradition, songs are supposed to be infused with saudade – an intense, almost unbearable yearning – and no one did saudade better than the beloved Amalia.“The Portuguese Suite” has two male sailors locked in a forbidden love affair, a Greek chorus of wailing women, and nine Amalia songs backto-back. That’s a lot of saudade, and “The Portuguese Suite” has a hard time sustaining any kind of arc – emotionally, it’s all the same color. But there are wonderful things in it – the marvelous, straight-backed posture of the village women, whose shoulders quake and buckle with hysteria and who resolutely do not want to stop grieving; the tiny little white gingerbread houses, with their front doors carved in symbols of a ship, a star, a shield; a cryptic gesture of fate, with the dancers pointing one long finger meaningfully at their heads; and a breathtaking solo for Mr. Williams, whose proud, explosive dancing is as riveting as anything onstage these days.The story is straightforward: An American sailor falls for a Portuguese sailor at sea, but of course, they eventually come into port. The Portuguese sailor’s fiancee finds out, the village disapproves, and the Portuguese sailor gets cold feet, and all the while Amalia is singing of forbidden love, of “lips burning with kisses / that kiss the air and nothing else.”Andrei Garzon plays the Portuguese sailor, and he’s an excellent dancer. But nobody’s comparing him to Nijinsky, and after a while, he begins to seem an inadequate love object for the passionate, compelling Mr.Williams.When Mr. Williams dances his solo – attempting to seduce his lover back – the tousle of hair falling over his sweaty cheek makes him look intensely, androgynously pretty.You feel you would watch him do anything.If Mr. Williams reminds me of someone, it’s not Nijinsky, but the young Mark Morris. But I suspect Mr. Morris would have given himself the part of the Portuguese sailor, and danced his two conflicting halves against each other in a tour de force. As a choreographer, Mr. Williams has verve and visual acuity. Now he needs to make better use of his company’s greatest asset: his own dancing.***It will surprise no one who has seen the painstakingly slow dance theater of Eiko and Koma that the duo has now made a piece in which you literally watch paint dry. The piece is “Cambodian Stories,” and the paint arrives courtesy of nine brush-wielding students from Phnom Penh’s Reyum Institute of Arts and Culture, where Eiko and Koma have been conducting workshops for two years.“Cambodian Stories” departs from the usual Eiko and Koma method in two ways: It takes place in a proscenium theater, and it includes dancers other than Eiko and Koma. Unfortunately, both decisions dilute the power of their unique art.The duo’s slowly-expanding motions and long, long pauses feel more potent outdoors, with a wind blowing and some trees rustling. Here, they put sand on the stage and piped in cricket sounds. But the very sight of the sand makes you wish you were watching this somewhere in Cambodia, standing with a crowd of curious locals. Sam-Ang Sam’s Cambodian pop tunes would feel right at home there; Here, they feel antiseptically imported.And while Eiko and Koma’s work with the nine newly-minted dancers (aged 16 to 22) is certainly noble, the amateurs’ presence in “Cambodian Stories” sharply underscores the point (sometimes disputed) that what Eiko and Koma do is hard to do well. Very few performers can make you want to watch them move every infinitesimal bone in their hands.And these eight boys (and the lone girl in the company) seem uncomfortable moving at a snail’s pace. They perform the elongated steps like kids in a dance recital, eager to do everything right.But the students come alive when they grab their brushes and start sweeping color over canvas, filling vast swaths in no time. Their frenetic pace contrasts sharply with the extravagant slowness of Eiko and Koma, who float across the stage like ancient ghosts.There is a strong sense of sadness and mystery in “Cambodian Stories,” which unfolds in the long shadow of Pol Pot’s regime. The giant portraits which hang over the scene – Cambodian women with right arms raised, thumb and forefinger pinched together – are mesmerizing. And the young dancers project an intense yearning. In the end, the commingling of naivete and sorrow that has long been central to Eiko and Koma’s work does come through in “Cambodian Stories” – just at a lower volume.

Recasting Tales of Saints & Sailors

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