Original Synapse: Body Artist

Readymade Dance Theater Company’s new piece was inspired by Don Delillo’s 2001 novel, The Body Artist. Director Zsolt Palcza listened it to by audiotape—a great one read by Laurie Anderson—while driving to Mexico one year. Her voice is mesmerizing; it puts one into a trancelike state, much like the 300 miles of carretera between Nogales and the Pacific Ocean.

“He sat with the newspaper, stirring his coffee. It was his coffee and his cup. They shared the newspaper but it was actually, unspokenly, hers…The telephone was his except when she was calling the weather…”

The New York Times called the book, “a dark elliptical tone poem.” It’s a story about shared domesticity and death and rebirth. A performance artist goes back to the vacation cottage she’s shared with her husband who’s committed suicide. And this strange man shows up in the house—Mr. Tuttle—who eerily recites conversations, word for word, that she’s had with her late husband. She starts to tape record him, and then she transforms herself, through her work as a body artist, into him. Because she’s grieving and this is the only way she can deal with it. 

We wrote a grant for a dance theater piece, describing the  “conscious and unconscious patterns of intimates cohabiting a space,” and the “altered states of physical and emotional exertion.” New Mexico Arts, a division of the National Endowment of the Arts, agreed to help underwrite its creation and production.

Unfortunately, Delillo had just sold all the book rights to a film production company in LA, and they didn’t want to share any part of it. So the book was out: No text, no characters, no scenes. Now all that remains of the genesis is a haunted melancholy that seeps throughout the performance. Director Zsolt Palcza—a great mind/body artist himself—has made it utterly his own. Body Artist, the dance theater piece, bears Palcza’s characteristic mark of detailed choreography, an exclamation point of obsessive physicality. Company dancers Jenny Hipscher and Ephraim Colbert bring the piece to life vividly through their blood, sweat, tears, and psyches. Lighting designer Gordon Kennedy holds the moodiness and tension with his masterful lighting. 

Currently we are taking great care to select audio-books and other listening material for the road; who knows where they might end up one day? One thing is certain: we are very excited to bring Body Artist to the San Francisco dance/theater/art community at the CounterPULSE performance space on May 21-22, 2010. Thanks to our friends who’ve helped to get the word out. See you there!

Whitney Woodward

Managing Director, Readymade Dance Theater Company