Christopher Williams

A curious “alchemist of theatre" aiming to transcend boundaries between a variety of art forms, Christopher Williams continues to hone a distinctive personal style that combines contemporary dance with visual design, music, and puppetry to yield multifaceted movement-based performance works in his own imaginative genre. Fascinated by the ways in which the earliest bands of humans ritually engaged with supernatural denizens of otherworlds, Williams creates works that present his own contemporary queer testimony to our primeval cultural impulse to journey beyond the known realm. By combining highly technical choreographic vocabulary with vivid visual designs and music integral to each new work, Williams aims to revive an ancient sense of ritual and spectacle by immersing a broad public in fantastical new worlds.

Casey Hess and Alexander Olivieri as Oreads in "Narcissus" (2021) commissioned by New York Live Arts. Photo by Marc Safran Photography

Thumbnail - Gentry George as Amore in "Il Giardino d'Amore" (2017) commissioned by Danspace Project. Photo by Andrew Jordan.

Christopher Williams, dubbed “the downtown prodigy” (The New Yorker) and “one of the most exciting choreographic voices out there” (The New York Times) is a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” award-winning choreographer, dancer, and puppeteer working in New York City and abroad since 1999. His works have been presented internationally in Colombia, Holland, Spain, Malawi, France, England, Italy, and Russia as well as in many New York City venues including Lincoln Center, City Center, New York Live Arts, Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, PS 122, La Mama, and the 92nd Street Y. He has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, The Center for Ballet & the Arts, the Bogliasco Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He holds degrees from Sarah Lawrence College and the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris, and has since performed for Tere O’Connor Dance, Douglas Dunn & Dancers, Rebecca Lazier, Yoshiko Chuma, John Kelly, Dan Hurlin, and Basil Twist, among others.