You know the guy: so good-looking that everyone is after him, though he’s bewitched only by his own reflection. This personality type is called narcissistic after the myth about Narcissus. The character still gives us a name to something we recognize.
But what about Echo, you ask? Echo falls in love with Narcissus, and, when rejected, she dies until she is just a voice that continues to repeat. Her name endures, too, labeling the sound, but with the rest of her tragic story submerged in Narcissus’ greater fame.
Christopher Williams’s new hourlong dance is called “Narcissus,” but the work, which had its premiere at New York Live Arts on Thursday, is equally about Echo. The shift in focus and an altered ending are part of Williams’s contemporary queer reimagining of the story.
Williams’ take is contemporary but Williams is also an artist who loves old things. Another impetus for his “Narcissus” is to dust off a neglected score, “Narcisse et Echo,” which Nikolai Tcherepnin composed in 1911 for “Narcisse,” a Ballets Russes work choreographed by Michel Fokine, with Nijinsky in the title role.
The first salient difference between what one might imagine of that lost ballet and Williams’s work is the costuming. In ancient Boeotia, we meet a small tribe of what the program calls “mountain nymphs.” Their ears are like those of jackals, their buttocks are exposed and their penises are encased in long, curly packages that resemble root vegetables.
Williams’s program note is a well-written and well-understood one. He identifies these penis sheaths (or phallocrypts) as koteka. He then links the practice to the display of sexually attractive flowers, like that which Narcissus takes in the myth. It’s a potent idea, which Williams’s longtime costume designer, Andrew Jordan, has realized masterfully. (All the costumes are a joy.
Echo (Mac Twining), a mountain newcomer, has a phallic sheath and breasts. In Williams’s conception, Echo is intersex, cruelly rejected by the other nymphs, who won’t let poor Echo play in any mountain-nymph games. I thought it was gibberish-like, but Williams could have been speaking ancient languages.
Hope arrives in the form of Narcissus. Taylor Stanley, New York City Ballet’s star, plays him. His physical intelligence and physical beauty sets him apart. Echo and Narcissus enter into a mirroring dance, in which Echo lifts Narcissus like an acrobat. But when Narcissus’s reflection (the equally beautiful Cemiyon Barber) shows up, Echo is again shut out, no match for the attraction of sameness.
All of this is skillfully keyed to the score, which sounds somewhere between Tchaikovsky and Ravel in orchestral color but doesn’t have much drive. Williams is a bit like Mark Morris. He marks each celesta scale or timpani boost with a gesture which might be balletic, or Fosse-esque. This effect is cute, but rarely more than that.
The fidelity to the score ties “Narcissus” to the narrative faults of the music, which is more decorative than dramatic. And for all of its contemporary queerness, the work feels a bit stodgy; its choreographic conservativeness made me desire the sort of radical swerve that Nijinsky took, in the years right after “Narcisse,” with “L’Apres-midi d’un Faune” and “The Rite of Spring.”
Still, this “Narcissus” registers as a kind of uncloseted version of early Ballets Russes, and its handsomeness harbors a critique of a homoeroticism that excludes the likes of Echo. Even though Echo’s ending is less tragic, the message is still clear.
The final image is both hilarious and profound. It’s no spoiler to say that when Narcissus reveals his goods, what we see is a flower.
Narcissus
Saturday, New York Live Arts, Manhattan; www.newyorklivearts.org
Source: NY Times
