Balls to Balzac:
A Journey from Testicles to Women in the Bourbon Restoration (2010)

Premiered at CELLSpace, 2010, San Francisco, CA
Choreography, text, and performance: Amy Lewis

A performance art dancelecture on the use of “balls” as slang, the term’s relationship to Honoré de Balzac, and Balzac’s portrayal of 19th century society women.

about

Balls to Balzac was part of a longer, ongoing piece based on my friendship with Bill Wolter--a composer I have been working with for the last few years--coupled with research on Honoré de Balzac, author of The Human Comedy.

My interest in the subject of Wolter/Balzac began with the creation of Cartography of a Synchronous Telemtrist (2009). Wolter and I had many discussions about the concept behind this work, and I discovered that Wolter was disappointed in the way consumerism influenced every aspect of modern life. At this point, I had been researching and reading Balzac for many years; he began coming up a lot in my thinking while I was speaking with Wolter.

Balls to Balzac was an performed essay about these two figures and their relationship to one another. Though the focus of the essay was Wolter's use of slang ("balls deep"), phrases which use the term "balls" including "balls-ache", Balzac's nickname "balls-ache" by nineteenth century students, and Balzac's representation of the ideal heroine, consumerism connects Wolter and Balzac more than any word could. For Balzac, consumerism meant the increase of his reading public, and therefore his income, yet it also signified the fluidity of class boundaries and the dislocation and chaos that went along with a rapidly changing world.

Someday the Wolter/Balzac project will be finished. When I have read The Human Comedy. After all, there are only ninety-five novels.

bibliography

Allan, Keith and Kate Burridge. Euphemism & Dysphemism: Language Used as Shield and Weapon. New     York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Balzac, Honoré de. Beatrix. Trans. George Burnham Ives. Philadelphia: George Barrie & Son, c1897.
---.The Correspondence of Honoré de Balzac. Trans. C. Lamb Kenney. Vol. 1. London: R. Bentley, 1878.
---. A Harlot High and Low. Trans. Rayner Heppenstall. London: Penguin Books, 1970.
---. The Letters of Honoré de Balzac to Madame Hanska. Trans. Katharine Prescott Wormeley. Boston:     Little, Brown, and Company, 1900.
---. The Lily of the Valley. Trans. Katharine Prescott Wormeley. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1891.
---. The Wild Ass’s Skin. Trans. Herbert J. Hunt. London: Penguin Books, 1977.
---. A Woman of Thirty. Ed. George Saintsbury. Trans. Ellen Marriage. London: J.M. Dent and Co., 1897.
Butler, Ronnie. Balzac and the French Revolution. London: Barnes & Noble Books, 1983 .
Calle, Mireille, ed. On the Feminine. Trans. Catherine McGann. New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1996.
“Creedence Lyrics: Lodi.” Creedence Online. .
Floyd, Juanita Helm. Women in the Life of Balzac. New York: H. Holt and Company, 1921.
Jameson, Fredric. Marxism and Form: Twentieth-century Dialectical Theories of Literature. New Jersey:     Princeton University Press, c1971.
Jay, Timothy. Why We Curse: A Neuro-Psycho-Social Theory of Speech. Philadelphia: J. Benjamins, c2000.
Kanes, Martin, comp. Critical Essays on Honoré de Balzac. Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1990. Marceau, Felicien. Balzac and His World. Trans. Derek Coltman. New York: The Onion Press, 1966.
“Medicinal Fried Chicken.” South Park. Season 14. Comedy Central, New York. 31 Mar. 2010.
Partridge, Eric. A Concise Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. New York: Macmillan Publishing     Company, 1990.
Partridge, Eric. A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. Ed. Paul Beale. 8th Ed. New York:     Macmillan Publishing Company, 1984.
Partridge, Eric. Slang Today and Yesterday. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1934.
Prendergast, Christopher. Balzac: Fiction and Melodrama. London: Edward Arnold Ltd, 1978.
Proust, Marcel. By Way of Sainte-Beuve. Trans. Sylvia Townsend Warner. London: Hogarth, 1984.
Reinach, Jacquelyn. Nuts to Nightingale. Illus. Richard Hefter. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,     1978.

Photos