Volume 56, Number 13 · August 13, 2009
Pure Gold
By Joan Acocella
The Golden Legend
a dance piece by Christopher Williams
at Dance Theater Workshop, New York City, May 12–16, 2009
The Golden Legend, a compilation of lives of the saints made in the thirteenth century by Jacobus de Voragine, the archbishop of Genoa, is not something that would spring to mind as a likely basis for a work of 'downtown' dance. That is not because it is a holy book. There is a long tradition of holiness in modern dance (Ruth St. Denis, Doris Humphrey, Alvin Ailey, and onward). No, the problem, for adaptation as dance, is that The Golden Legend is so minutely representational and narrative. Jacobus covered more than one hundred fifty saints, and his aim, in each case, was to record all the traditions he could lay his hands on, whether or not they added up to a unified story.
Review, 4099 words
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