About

I have to admit that I always wanted to be a Sunday’s child (in folk legend one who is born on a Sunday is endowed with the ability to see faeries and other visions). When I was a boy my favorite species of unicorn mentioned in the Codex Unicornis (as part of Michael Green’s brilliant book De Historia et Veritate Unicornis written in 1983) was the Nimbi, a most precious and elusive creature said to be seen only by children. The title of this web log, The Land of Nimbi, referring literally both to these elegant diminutive beasts as well as to the plural of the noun nimbus (either a dark rain-bearing cloud or a radiant light that appears in the form of a circle or halo about or over the head of a holy person), intends to evoke a place where one may rejuvenate her or his imagination via offerings in the form of illuminated fragments of my own life’s manuscript and other marginalia. A fun feature of this blog is what I call Balderdash for the Medieval Gay (a compendium of queer words for the modern fag with a passion for the Middle Ages added hebdomadally every Sabbath day). Be sure to check back each Sunday for a curious new word. Eventually, the arranged words of this compendium will form an acrostic which will be revealed to me as time passes. As is stated on the cover of De Historia et Veritate Unicornis, this is also in my mind simply a place of brief refuge “for every seeker of the beautiful and wondrous.”

Portrait of the new me by the fabulous Peggy Jarrell Kaplan.

Christopher Williams is a choreographer, dancer, and puppeteer who has been concocting fantastical new works in the New York City area since 1999. Much to his parents’ chagrin, he began dancing when he was three years old by ceaselessly imitating the hummingbirds, antelopes, polar bears, giraffes, butterflies, and pygmy hippos that he witnessed at the National Zoo where he was born in Washington DC. At home, he performed daily feats of dazzling grace and pulchritude (by incarnating other more elusive beasts such as unicorns, gryphons, Pegasus, and centaurs that he could not stand to merely draw and sculpt) or of extreme asceticism (by pondering the tomes in the history and mythology section at the local public library for hours). After graduating from various institutions that provided space for physical activities such as gymnastics, horseplay, theater, and dancing (a result of which he was proudly awarded a gold star on the flexibility chart for his Ballet II class), he began choreographing for dual trampoline jumpers as well as directing epic works of theater in which he frequently appeared wearing a kimono while his brother was forced to leap out of abandoned refrigerator boxes with a sword. He eventually made his way to Sarah Lawrence College (among many other intriguing local high school outcasts) where he was officially infected by the modern dance bug under the mighty aegis of the great Dame Viola Farber. The great romance of living in Paris in the poetic physical world of the late Jacques Lecoq next claimed his undivided attention for two years, and he returned to the United States with an insatiable hunger for contemporary dance, mask and prosthetic art, and adult-oriented puppet-theater. After playing eager sea-sponge to the font of great artists in New York City including, but not limited to, Tere O’Connor, Douglas Dunn, John Kelly, Rebecca Lazier, Yoshiko Chuma, Dan Hurlin, and Basil Twist, he has been trying his own hand at dance and puppet creation for about ten years in various local and international spots. For more in-depth information visit www.christopherwilliamsdance.org at your leisure.

 

Portrait of an earlier me by my fabulous mom.

These photos were taken after and during one of my early ballet recitals. I am clearly showing off having at last been victorious in obtaining the much sought-after flexibility achievement award that year.* Note the hyper-extension in my arms in the above photo and my wicked back-bend in the one above that. Also worthy of mentioning is that I still look great in my tights and white T-shirt even though I had suffered a major bout with poison ivy the night before after climbing a vine-entwined tree at my brother’s baseball game. Note what could be an early sign of the read death on my cheek.

*Here is my official certificate to prove it…