what do you see?

something beautiful or something free?

(singing it loudly)

Art or artificial? "Nudity is like calling something 'Free Beer.' I always threaten to make people do stuff naked, and I'm all for it, but to me, it's usually more trouble than it's worth. If something is swinging around, that's all anybody looks at." (Mark Morris)

Times have changed. Nudity on stage isn‘t a headline-catching event anymore like it was back in the sexy sixties. Nowadays performing nude demonstrates vulnerability and has become a permanent theme in contemporary dance.

Even in the puritanical States nudity is getting more and more trendy and hits New Yorks' theatres. RoseLee Goldberg, a writer and historian, stated in an interview with the New York Times: "It seems like every now and then we need to remember that choreography is about the body." So take off the decoration. What remains is bare bareness. And of course choreography.

The spectator turns into a voyeur. Involuntarily! We can‘t help but sexualize and judge the nude body, put our own against the other and rate it in terms of desirability. For Goldberg nudity in dance is a way to force the audience into some form of discomfort. A whole range of questions appear - above all why we react positively or negatively. Are we eventually more uptight than we thought? Or is it just another view of aesthetics that we have?

Nevertheless, forming an opinion about it should be left to one‘s own resources. What counts is the idea of choreography to demonstrate by dint of nudity what the human body is and what it is capable of.

Daniel Léveillé: "La pudeur des icebergs" © Jaques Grenier

...those thinkers so common, unable to rise to the logic of the absurd

baudelaire