Putting the Balls Away

Putting the Balls Away is an interactive performance of the historic tennis match, The Battle of the Sexes. Through video and live performance spectators are transported to 1973. The project begins with a press conference announcing the challenge between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King. The two players sit side by side on video and interact with live "journalists" planted in the audience. Ballboys then unroll the Astroturf court while Rosie Casals (Billie Jean's five-time winning Wimbledon doubles partner) provides further background to the events leading up to the battle. The original television intro commences the match. Identities collide when I play opposite myself. Video of one player is rear-projected opposite the live performance of the other. After each game the competitors "switch sides." An onstage costume change transforms the live Billie Jean into Bobby Riggs. The video projection follows suit. An on-screen Bobby becomes Billie Jean.
The Battle of the Sexes was the most-watched live sporting event of all time in 1973 that pitted chauvanist against feminist when women tennis players demanded equal pay to that of their male counterparts. Excerpts from the sports commentators, Howard Cosell and Rosie Casals, exemplify the spirit of the match. When gender went "offsides" in a male-dominated arena, identity politics became part of a popular debate that overstepped sport fans and entered many Americans homes:
HC: There's the velocity that Billie Jean can put on the ball and walking back she's walking more like a male than a female.
RC: I just wonder whether Bobby would look better in a tennis dress . . . better than the shorts maybe.
HC: Billie Jean of course won the first set, to the absolute delight of all of the women in the arena. They actually stood and gave her an ovation and I suspect many in their living rooms did the same thing.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• battle
• of
• the
• sexes
• balls
• tennis
• Billie
• Jean
• King
• performance
• guggenheim
• show
• and
• tell
• tara
• mateik