Painted welded steel, 70 x 39 x 32, 2002.
A girl dances for a king, and he is so pleased that he offers her whatever she wants. On her mother’s prompting she asks for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. The sculpture shows the bargain after it was settled. At the figure’s feet lies a flanged steel form the size of a head, resting on a bright steel plate. The form is John’s head, and the plate is the platter it was served on, set on the ground where the dancer stands.
The figure above it holds the dance. A pink torso twists above a swung hip, and below it falls a heavy red skirt in deep vertical folds. The movement is all in the upper half, and the lower half hangs from it as still and weighty as a curtain. The skin and the skirt are the two colors of the piece, and both belong to her.
The head and the platter lie at the lowest point of the sculpture, at the base of the red column. The head is dark and hollow, the plate under it is polished, and nothing links either to the dancer except their position at her feet. Her body occupies the upper half of the sculpture, and his head lies on the ground. The two halves of the story, the dance and what it paid for, take the top and the bottom of one vertical.
