Out of the Body Travel

A "young woman who finds herself surrounded by the relics of Western culture" is the subject of Richard Foreman's formal tableaux. The narration centers on a young woman's struggle to find a relation between her body and her self as mediated by language. The text is a poetry of formal relations that carries personal and historical implications, including the desires of the woman paradoxically voiced by a male narrator. The title suggests the vivid virtuality of dreaming; scenes repeatedly refer to both reading and sleeping.

Richard Foreman, founder and director of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater in New York, produced this first videotape project with students from the American Dance Festival and cinematographer Babette Mangolte.

Only an excerpt of this title (23:50) is available. It is also included in Surveying the First Decade: Volume 1.