Numerous paintings and photographs feature thousands of people naked in an ecstatic dance, anticipating the central position of the body to the creation of a modern, liberated identity. Photo: NellyĮxpressionist dance pioneer Rudolf von Laban also explored the naked body as a site of liberation in the utopian society of Monte Verità in Ascona (1913-1918). “What mattered in Isadora’s Hellenic dances,” explains Ann Daly (1995), “was not the Greek themes or the gauzy costumes but the uninhibited vitality, the sense of a glorious nakedness about to be affirmed, not only in the rituals of lovers but in every part of life.” Classical Greece had the power to “purify” taboos associated with the naked body as well as womanhood. Her idea of combining the body as flesh with a symbolic notion of the soul shifted the image of the female body away from eroticism. In an era still dominated by Victorian morals, Isadora Duncan dared to expose her breasts in some of her dances. Thus dance and sex may be conceived as inseparable even when sexual exploration is unintended.” As Judith Lynne Hanna notes in her essay on sexuality in dance (2010): “Dance and sex both use the same instrument-namely, the human body-and both involve the language of the body’s orientation toward pleasure. In A Brief History of Nakedness, Philipp Carr-Gomm points out that “nakedness in ballet may still be rare, but when it comes to contemporary dance there have been many more naked performances in dance over the last fifty years than there have been in the theatre.” How can we interpret this increasing display of bare bodies in contemporary dance? By returning to the body, free from the symbolism of clothing and of moral codes, dancers and choreographers seem to be exploring a pre-cultural sense of being human.Īnd how do different audiences perceive the sense of intimacy that nudity attaches to performance? Although nudity can signify innocence or purity, it remains a controversial issue in the arts and in society at large. The site of these incidents also reminds us that nudity has been an integral motif in the arts for thousands of years.īeyond the boundaries of political activism, an explosion of nakedness has also been present in the performing arts and particularly in dance. This incident brings to mind Isadora Duncan photographed in the Parthenon by Edward Steichen in 1903, or Mona Paiva, dancer in the Opéra Comique, in Paris, who posed in the same place for the well-known Greek photographer Nelly in 1927, followed two years later by the Hungarian dancer Nikolska. “No God, No Master” was written across the chest of a blond woman from the “Femen” group, who posed in front of the Erechtheion Temple on the Acropolis as a Caryatid of modern times. Recently, we have been experiencing an explosion of global protests in which activists have stripped themselves of clothing to draw attention to the vulnerability and power of the body in the social system we live in.Ī protest precipitated by Greece’s financial crisis occurred in May 2013, in the center of Athens. The public display of the nude body with its multiple and complex associations has a powerful impact on our awareness of the self and otherness. NAKED OR NUDE (Kenneth Clark thought there was a difference), the human body has been a source of creative inspiration in all forms of visual art and performance, from painting and sculpture to theater, film, performance and body art, digital art, and live political activism.
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