Founded in 2016 by Caitlin Scranton and Matt Pardo, the The Christopher Williams Project is the second for the fledgling organization and is stylistically light years from their first, 2017’s minimalist Lucinda Childs: The Early Works.
Thursday, October 25, 2018
The Blanket channels Passion plays and superheroes in its new production, The Christopher Williams Project
Founded in 2016 by Caitlin Scranton and Matt Pardo, the The Christopher Williams Project is the second for the fledgling organization and is stylistically light years from their first, 2017’s minimalist Lucinda Childs: The Early Works.
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Dance has always been one of the more physically taxing ways of telling a story, emotion and intent has to be convey on every part of a dancer, they don't get to rely on words. If the dancers are good, then they won't have to rely on a script because the "dances will convey the emotional aspects of those saints' demise." The concept of The Christopher Williams Project is incredibly unique. Personally I don't think that watching anything on the martyrdom of different Christian saints seems, by principle, that appealing, however, it looks like the company put in the time and effort to make their concept and performances engaging. In Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins the dancers are dancing right off the paper and onto the stage. I believe this adaptation of visual works also played into the influence of costumes, because in the opening photo for this article the main dancer is covered all in white, and has talons which looks very mythological. I'd be interested to see how the dancers portray becoming martyred without throwing the entire audience into a grossed out frenzy. I think that's another challenge of dance, that they have to make even the ugliest of things, in a way, beautiful. As someone who has studied a bit of art in my education I think it would be intriguing to see how visual art, medieval paintings are brought to life on stage.
I don’t know much about the world of theatrical dance, and this show sounds utterly unique and intriguing to me. I think that dance has the advantage in telling stories with more sensitive content over straight plays or musicals because of its more abstract nature. The article says that the piece won’t explicitly depict acts of martyrdom, “like someone being ripped open with a meat hook,” but that the dance will take a more emotional route in conveying the same story. The ‘just so’ nature of perfectly polished professional dance can economically convey a story or message in a single gesture. It is a tool that I hope to see more of in theater and potentially incorporate into my own work as a designer. The article also mentions the importance of costuming in dance, acknowledging that technical aspects often help fill in information where the abstraction of dance doesn’t complete the sentence.
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