<< Article19 Home

Danglers

Published Sunday, 5 June, 2011 | Comments

Why do people like Dave St-Pierre's make shows like 'Tendresse', the work that involves men scrambling over the audience in the nude and apparently spitting on the personal property of dance critics?

It's all very very simple.

The choreographer makes the work because he knows it's ridiculous and outrageous and this makes for easy ticket sales so theatres will book it. Why spend weeks crafting movement when you can just whip out your tackle and shove it in someones face?

Theatres love it because they know the show is media bait and will attract coverage of sufficient quantity to sell tickets. Said theatre will also bee seen as "risky" and "edgy" in their programming decisions.

Folks in the media love it because it gives them something else to do away from all the review writing and they get to use the word "arse" more than once. Their editors love it because pieces about shows that have nudity in them are good link and comment bait, this is god for ad revenues.

Audiences love it because they can say "I was there" and those inside the industry can profess their love or hatred of it and thereby seal their cool/morale standing in the wacky world of dance. Those that describe such works as "touching" are usually hiding a deeper mania.

So, everybody's a winner, except the actual dance profession of course which ends up looking ridiculous.

As if it wasn't already ridiculous enough.

  • Kema

    Paul

    like Article19 said the main reason for nudity in dance pieces is to get the audience in, no other!!

    In the UK nudity still has a shock value, remember Phoenix Dance had an issue with trade descriptions because someone saw a flyer with naked dancers on and there were no naked dancers on stage!!

    http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/...

    http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/ho...

    cheers Paul

    Kema
    Manchester

  • Paul

    So are you saying it's wrong to make work with nudity? Or just this one? Did you see it? Would be good to hear why you thought it was unnecessary... Personally, I think you don't look ridiculous if you're making good work; you look ridiculous if you're judging work based on the costuming (or lack thereof) etc. without actually assessing the content of the work... As the Telegraph did. And you're not like the Telegraph right?
    Paul

  • No we're not saying it's wrong to make work with nudity in it, and the reason you know that is it doesn't say that above. But we know Spalding (the dance world's biggest opportunistic hypocrite), we know artists and we know choreographers (good ones) that can craft a solid message without resorting to dumbass shock tactics. Also, we don't buy into the bullshit as easily as some. 

    Never seen the work, never will but this piece is about nudity, end of.

blog comments powered by Disqus