Dancer fleshes out her art

London-based Spanish choreographer-dancer Maria La Ribot added the “La” before her surname, she says, as a joke.

“It’s popular in Spain to put ‘la’ before your name, or as a way to call your neighbor,” she explained recently by telephone during a tour stop in France. “But at the same time, it’s a diva way to call someone. Like Maria Callas was La Callas. It works for me like this.”

Yet the occasional operatic Salome aside, La Ribot may be the only diva in the world to always perform naked, as in her one-woman shows “Mas Distinguidas” and “Still Distinguished.” Tonight through Saturday, both will receive their U.S. premieres at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica.

Despite baring all, La Ribot does wear wigs and stilettos. (Like Carrie on “Sex and the City,” she favors Manolo Blahniks.) In addition, she makes use of an array of props, from ordinary folding chairs, tape measures and twine to the not-so-everyday, such as fake blood. Her work has been advertised as a “celebration of theater itself” by the London Fringe and called “sardonic, tender and disconcerting” by ABC Madrid.

Born in Madrid in 1962, La Ribot began dance training at age 14 and went on to study modern dance in Cannes, France; Cologne, Germany; and New York. By 1989, she had co-directed a dance company, Bocanada, for three years in her hometown. But, she says, she had also become discouraged by the vicissitudes of collaborating -- with dancers, composers, choreographers, costumers.

“One day, I realized this way of work, I didn’t like,” she recalls. “I stop the company completely. I was trying to look for another language and another way to work in dance. That’s when I put ‘La’ in front of my name and started to work alone, naked, in silence. I started to do little fragments that I could do every day on my own.”

In 1993 she began incorporating video and props in a series of short solos ranging from 30 seconds to seven minutes. Then, in homage to French composer Erik Satie’s “Trois valses distinguees du precieux degoute” (“Three distinguished waltzes of a disgusted dandy”), she created “13 Piezas Distinguidas,” an ironic nod toward divadom.

In these vignettes and others that followed in the “Distinguished” series, the performer can sometimes be found lying perfectly still, with wig askew or strategically placed on her body, or tying herself tightly with cord: woman as parcel, ready for delivery. In another gambit, she binds her joints with wooden splints as if she were a robot.

Then there’s La Ribot as salad: A video depicts her slathering olive oil, tomatoes and garlic cloves on her body, bringing to mind performance artist Karen Finley, notorious for smearing herself with chocolate.

But La Ribot insists she’s never heard of Finley. She says her concoction is indigenous to her native land.

“That’s a Spanish recipe. You do it with bread -- put oil on the bread, garlic and tomato. Some people put ham, but I don’t, because I am the ham,” she adds with a roar.

Danielle Brazell, artistic director of Highways, says of La Ribot: “She’s taking extraordinary risks, and she’s able to laugh and imbue humor and irony into her work, which is a sign of intelligence and of a seasoned artist.”

La Ribot’s pieces have proved successful at international art fairs, at dance and performance festivals and in theaters throughout Europe. It was while touring that she met her husband, Swiss choreographer Gilles Jobin. The couple had a son, Pablo, in 1996 and moved to London the following year. But domesticity for La Ribot is as likely to be found on stage as in the family abode.

“The chairs,” she says, “have been with my pieces since 1985. They’re very easy. You can travel with this foldable thing. I love what I have around me -- like high heels, but I think it’s something very uncomfortable for women. I wear them when I was younger, but now they’re too complicated. I don’t know how to walk in them.”

And the faux plasma? “Blood is something very connected with me. I’ve been watching blood in the bullfights all my life.”

What further distinguishes La Ribot’s oeuvre is that she sells her performance pieces to patrons, whom she calls “proprietors,” as intangible artworks. The buyer’s name appears in the program, and he or she is given tickets to see any performance of the piece. To date, La Ribot has transferred title to 26 “Distinguished” pieces.

“If I am doing dance, why cannot I sell?” she says. “In a way, it was a joke, but I started to sell and see if it was possible. It was, and this opened the door to other things. The ‘Distinguished’ properties started to be angels that support me. Because I have one, I could have the next one.”

La Ribot says the existing pieces in the “Distinguished” series will be the last, however, meaning the works are no longer for sale. She plans to “rethink everything” and go back to collaboration -- on a project with 40 people.

In the interim, she maintains, “I do my work, and the audience has a lot of things to feel and to think and to question. What is art? What is not art? What can be sold or not? It’s a question mark as well -- the ephemeralness.”

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Maria La Ribot

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Where: Highways Performance Space, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica

When: Tonight and Thursday, 8:30 p.m. (“Mas Distinguidas”); Friday, 8:30 p.m., and Saturday, 8:30 and 10 p.m. (“Still Distinguished”)

Price: $18

Contact: (310) 315-1459