Magic and Gobbledygook

“Gobbledygook,” “Hen’s Teeth”

Christopher Williams

Dance New Amsterdam

New York, NY

June 4, 2010

By Martha Sherman

Copyright © 2010 by Martha Sherman

Christopher Williams is a wildly creative guy – a striking dancer, a sensitive puppeteer, an idiosyncratic choreographer, and, it turns out, a player of the troubadour harp as well. One of his dancers, Ursula Eagley describes how she loves “being back in his magical, historical imagination.” So do I. It’s a bit messy in this evening of myth and ghosts, but as he swings his dancers from nakedness to feathers, and his vocalists from guttural Japanese to tightly harmonic requiem, Williams is never less than engaging.

 

The magic that Williams creates in dance owes much to his skill as a puppeteer. His use of costume and imagery in these pieces forced us to dig into our own experiences and more deeply, into our subconscious to follow tales from a wide swath of cultures (the chants and legends are Japanese, Breton, Latin, Greek, and Middle French.) 

In “Gobbledygook,” the soundtrack, by David Griffin, opened with soft whispering gentle ghosts that became the hiss of demonic spirits. They were called upon, or perhaps exorcised, by the Japanese traditional chant that Nakamura called through the piece. Dressed in a wide Japanese pant costume, his face also took on the wide “O” that evoked Japanese traditional theater.  

The story is a gobbledygook made up of several folk tales, including the “hungry ghosts” of the Buddhist tradition. The ghost here, Adam H. Weinert, opened the piece splayed upstage, naked and lizard-like, in harsh white light against a black backdrop. He jerked and curled, and as the ghostly sounds turned ominous and harsh, Weinert’s movement jumped and bounced, as if escaping from Furies. There has been a lot of dance nudity this season, much of it gratuitous. In “Gobbledygook,” Adam Weinert’s nakedness is pure metaphor, a dead soul in torment. The dance is based on a Buddhist ritual, segaki, about easing the dead’s suffering, and as Weinert flung himself violently at the black backdrop, Eikazu Nakamura stepped out of the shadows to catch him.

Nakamura, too, was a troubled wanderer, chanting, jumping, clapping, and pushing his hands flat against some invading presence. He matched graceful leaps with backward leaning balances as his face moved from blank to deeply expressive. As the hissing spirits quieted to a buzz of crickets, he quieted as well. Weinert rejoined him on stage, the two in simple sitting poses backs toward the audience. Finally Nakamura lifted Weinert to his chest and slowly, peacefully, carried him off stage – each rescuing the other. 

In the world premiere of “Hen’s Teeth,” Williams invoked “Swan Lake,” then created one of his own, set to a beautiful requiem composed by Gregory Spears. Williams’ young swans entered one by one, in mesmerizing parallel movement that filled the stage. Graceful raised curved arms of winged motion were paired with sharper birdlike elbows and bobbing heads. Their costumes, designed by Andy Jordan, were two narrow bands of soft feathers at waist and shoulders. In the early scenes, they fluttered with soft wings; later, the swans tore off their feathered wings with their own teeth, revealing themselves as the flying women from the Breton fairytale that inspired the dance and the music.

Spears’s rich, harmonic score was sung by six vocalists, the piercing soprano by Ruth Cunningham. They were accompanied by harp, viola, percussion, and several troubadour harps – including the one played by Williams himself. In the intimate setting of Dance New Amsterdam, the opulence of live music was especially grand. Williams also used the unusually wide layout of the DNA performing space and its wall length stage left mirror to magnify and multiply the delicate movements and patterns of the swans. In the central story of “Hen’s Teeth,” a woodsman played by Weinert appeared and was smitten by one of the bird women, Storme Sundberg.  In a wonderfully magical scene, the rest of the women were the instruments for Weinert and Sundberg’s flight – borne on their shoulders, and on strong, fully outstretched arms, the couple soared in and around the stage space. Their full flat bodies twisted in parallel, extending away then curving toward each other. 

Every fairy tale needs its witches. In “Hen’s Teeth” these were the Graeae, described in legend as “three swan-like crones.” Here they were monstrous, their faces with bald and rag-covered masks, looked like root systems of particularly ugly vegetation. They were scary puppets made live, their movements ungainly. In a pair of confusing scenes, one of the flying women collapsed, and the blind crones stretched their clawed hands toward her. As they danced and bells tolled, she seemed to recover; the dance closed with the man, perhaps being sacrificed for love, moving back into shadow with the gorgons.

I’m a big fan of fairy tales and archetypes, and a big fan of Williams' mystery and movement. “Hen’s Teeth,” though, got lost in its own extremity.  A little more subtlety and a little less complexity would have eased the confusion. The piece is already supersized with talent – the music, the voices, the cast’s size and skill. With its too-rich mishmash of stories and images, Williams set us loose in subconscious without offering an escape. Some restraint in his choices would have helped provide the thread to guide us out of that dark wood.

Copyright © 2010 by Martha Sherman

Photos by Florence Baratay

Top:  Eikazu Nakamura in “Gobbledygook”

Middle: Hope Davis, Kira Blazek, Storme Sundberg, Emily Stone, Jennifer Lafferty in “Hen’s Teeth”

Bottom: Alison Granucci, Joan Arnold, and Grazia Della Terza, Jennifer Lafferty (foreground) in “Hen’s Teeth”