Christopher Williams: Spectre de la Rose / La Rhétorique des Dieux

What does it mean to engage with traditions of bygone eras, and reimagine them for the here and now?

“Bessie” Award winner and Guggenheim Fellow Christopher Williams, hailed by The New York Times as “one of the most exciting choreographic voices out there” and dubbed “the downtown prodigy” by The New Yorker, premières a sixth work in his ongoing Queering the Canon: Reimagining the Ballets Russes series, bringing a thrilling double bill program to 92NY that reshapes inherited traditions with rigor, wit, and astonishing originality.

In his Spectre de la Rose, a romantic reverie becomes something more fluid, gliding across thresholds of gender, perception, and tradition. Commissioned for world première at 92NY, the work reimagines Fokine’s 1911 Ballets Russes classic starring Karsavina and Nijinsky, in which a young woman dreams of dancing with the spirit of a souvenir rose from her first ball. Williams refracts the original scenario through a prismatic queer lens inspired by elements of contemporary ballroom culture, drawing on its traditions mingling fantasy and realness in performance. Set to an array of musical selections including Carl Maria von Weber’s Aufforderung zum Tanz (Invitation to the Dance) and sound design by Tei Blow, the work features designs by longtime collaborators Joe Levasseur (lighting) and recent “Bessie” Award winner Andrew Jordan (costumes).

Set to excerpts from Denis Gaultier’s eponymous suite for Baroque lute, La Rhétorique des Dieux foregrounds the mythic figure of Phaëthon — cast down to the realm of mortals from that of the divine — exploring his encounters with an array of figures from Greco-Roman mythology appearing in unexpected contemporary guises. Presented at 92NY for its New York première, the work also features lighting by Joe Levasseur along with costumes by Andrew Jordan and Williams.

At 92NY, long a home for artists expanding the language of dance, Williams engages tradition head on, reshaping it into something captivating, expansive, and entirely his own.

This performance is part of the Harkness Mainstage Series’ Home season, exploring how dance maps the shifting terrain of home, identity, and belonging, and the borders — visible and invisible — that shape us.