Christopher Williams

Christopher Williams is a dancer, choreographer, and puppeteer based in New York City. He received a BA in 1999 from Sarah Lawrence College where he studied choreography with the late Viola Farber and puppetry with Dan Hurlin. Christopher has also studied contemporary dance technique most notably with Jeremy Nelson, Vicky Shick, Douglas Dunn, Rebecca Lazier, and at the Merce Cunningham Dance Studio, where he received 3 scholarships to join their professional training program. As a puppeteer, Christopher has worked with Basil Twist both serving as the Ballet Captain for the puppets’ choreography as well as performing the title role in his version of Petrushka, and has toured extensively in the award-winning work of Dan Hurlin.

He is the recipient of grants from the Jim Henson Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and has been commissioned both as a guest artist at Princeton University in 2006 and through the Dream Music Puppetry Program through the HERE Artist Residency Program in 2004. He received a Bessie Schönberg Memorial Endowed Fellowship for a residency at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and has been awarded residencies at Dance New Amsterdam, Joyce SoHo, the White Oak Plantation, Yaddo, and The Yard. He currently serves on the Artist Advisory Board for the Danspace Project and lives in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Douglas Dunn

Photo: Douglas Dunn Dance

1971 began presenting his own work, solos, collaborative duets and group pieces, de-emphasizing dancing and asking the question what am I doing here on stage anyway. During this period presented 101, a performance exhibit, four hours of stillness six days a week for seven weeks, and completed two films, one with Charles Atlas, Mayonnaise: Part I, and one with Amy Greenfield, 101. In 1975, signaling a return to uninhibited dancing, presented the hour long solo Gestures in Red in New York City, and went on to tour the work in France, Canada and the United States. In 1976-77 worked on Lazy Madge, an ongoing choreographic project for ten dancers. Structuring rehearsals around the availability of the dancers, continued to add steps over an eighteen month period, a performance being a snapshot of a particular moment in the process, each dancer having choice of when and with what front to present the material that had been custom made for him or her.

Douglas Dunn & Dancers formed in 1978 and that year invited to perform at the Autumn Festival in Paris. In 1980 the Autumn Festival and The Paris Opera Ballet invited Dunn to choreograph Stravinsky's full length Pulcinella on the Opera dancers as part of an homage to the composer. Most recently, 2004, presented The Higgs field at the Pinetum in Central Park, New York City, six of us amid squirrels, dogs, babies, & Park officials eager to tell us what we could & could not do where. www.douglassdunndance.com