"The Golden Legend"
Christopher Williams
Dance Theater Workshop
New York, NY
May 12, 2009
by Lisa Rinehart
copyright © 2009 by Lisa Rinehart
Christopher Williams' animation of the generally miserable lives of seventeen of Christianity's most beloved male saints is rough going. But imaginative costuming, clever puppets, period music and performances by some of New York's best downtown dancers make it worth the effort.
And it is an effort. Williams' inspiration for "The Golden Legend" is the Legenda Aurea Sanctorum (or, "The Golden Legend of the Saints"), a veritable laundry list of torture techniques used on unfortunate saints-to-be. Written in the 1200's by Jacobus de Voragine, it was second only to the Bible in popularity more than 200 years later and is still in print today. In medieval times, clergy and scholars couldn't get enough of the grisly stories.
Nor can Christopher Williams.
Williams' fascination with medieval Gitmo tactics translates into three hours of moaning, grunting and flailing as martyrs are, in random order: grilled, whipped, beaten, stoned, flayed, pierced with arrows, scraped with sharp shells, beheaded and thrown into the woods, the sea, or the latrines. Williams, gleefully, it seems, explores every horror with graphic, fleshy rawness.
Fortunately, positives rise from the miasma. With a scholarly appreciation for medieval art and music and a personal identification with the passion of these stories, Williams suggests that each saint, perhaps because he was gay, or ascetic, or possibly simply insane, suffered because he was different. Images pulled from illuminated manuscripts, stained glass windows and sculpted cathedral stones draw us into a world where such delicate souls are torn apart by ignorance and fear.
It's hard to say if being tortured will get you martyrdom today, but Williams can make a nice vignette for you. David Parker, Paul Singh, Jonah Bokaer, Julian Barnett, Glen Rumsey, Rommel Salveron, Chris Elam, Reid Bartelme, Stuart Singer, Chris M. Green and Gus Solomons Jr. are just a few of the talents Williams uses to bring these tragic tales to life. They do the best they can with Williams' limited solo vocabulary, but some appearances are particularly choice. John Kelly, with his slight physique and wan visage, is convincingly preternatural as the monastic Saint Anthony Abbot. Luke Miller frolics gamely in the nude as the libertine Saint Laurence and David Neumann shows off his comic timing as a pre-Father Christmas Saint Nicholas.
Along with a formidable design and construction team, Williams uses his talents as a costume and puppet designer to enrich the imagery. When Saint Anthony is tormented by demons, they are nasty little horned puppets protruding from the abdomens of five cloaked operators in a creepy display worthy of a horror flick. Saint Giles is suckled by a marionette that's a ringer for Bambi's mom and Saint Jerome pulls a thorn from the paw of a fuzzy marionette lion. More poetic is the flock of hand operated birds settling on the shoulders of Charley Scott as Saint Francis of Assisi, courtesy of muslin-cloaked nuns in floaty winged headdresses.
An ensemble of eleven musicians and singers round out the pictures with ethereal early music painstakingly selected by Williams and Susan Hellauer.
Two years in the making, "The Golden Legend" is epic in every way except, perhaps, in the depth of its final impact. It has a one-note quality that is deadening. When one saint cries out, "No, no! Stop, please stop," we recoil in sickening recognition of how cruel we can be to one another. When it happens again, we are less disturbed. When Saint Laurence shows us his parted buttocks for the third time up close and personal, we don't really care why he's doing it, we've seen enough. Williams is so passionate about shoving every indignity into our faces, we get a little too much of the "ick" factor and tune out.
That's a shame because under the grit and gore, the shimmering detail of "The Golden Legend" glows with a smoldering intensity that is more than fantastical costumes and cool puppets. We see it in solidly choreographed moments such as when the saints' tormentors -- a bare chested, ape-ish ensemble of men stomping and grunting in often comic tribal unity -- weave witty patterns into the mix. Or, when Williams has the female ensemble balance Aaron Mattocks as Saint James the More on the tops of their upended feet, then has him melt down amongst their legs like a log sinking into reeds. Or when Brian Brooks as Saint Stephen in a celestial crown of circling planets leads all the saints in a weirdly uplifting sort of hosanna to martyrdom. Such glints of the sacred help us watch longer and care more.
Williams' clearly celebrates the one-who-is-special, but with his obvious intelligence and astute visual instincts, I'd love to see him create more ensemble work. Even a saint might admit that martyrdom can be lonely and that the thinnest shaft of light can turn gloom to gold.
copyright © 2009 by Lisa Rinehart
Photos by Yi-Chun Wu
Top: Jonah Bokaer with Bryan Campbell, Sydney Skybetter, Brandin Steffensen, Philip Montana & Clay Drinko
Bottom: Brian Brooks with full cast
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