What does a professional dancer do in this case?

[vagansmom]

I'm re-posting the following excerpt someone posted as a question on a thread over on the Ballet Moms & Dads thread.

I asked my DD coach, a soloist with the local Co., about nudity and she said "yes" some companies will have pieces that are a little more premiscious than others.

For example, she said Sylvi (sp?) just did a piece where she wore a see through shirt with no clothing under it. She said you could see more than just the out line of the body, you could see her chest. I have also read about g-string being worn. etc...

What do the dancers say if they feel uncomfortable about doing ballets like these, and what happens if the dancers refuses?

It's a good question and will, I hope, reach a wider variety of knowledgeable professionals here. It would be great to hear the insights and experiences of you ballet folks.

[Leigh Witchel]

What you can and can't be asked to do like that is often written into your contract. Most companies (at least most ballet companies) in the US would be accommodating about the refusal of a woman to go topless, but judging from a trip to the Netherlands, if you won't dance nude, you won't dance in the Netherlands. You can hardly keep their clothes on

[liebs]

The current Ballet Review has pictures from Forsythe's ballet's where the women's tops are sheer enough to see their breasts. Very common in hs work I think.

[Jane Simpson]

However I do remember that when the Royal Ballet did Hermann Schmermann, which is probably the work referred to, one of the later casts (Deborah Bull?) wore a bra under the see-through top - so there was evidently some choice.

[Mel Johnson]

Europe never had the Anthony Comstock Experience. Comstock (1844-1915) was the founder of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, and was appalled by all sorts of things. He even succeeded in getting the New York County Courthouse to have a dress made, complete with hat, for its statue of Justice. He fell afoul of "contemporary community standards" when he took on Paul Chabas' rather chaste painting "September Morn". Not only was he unable to enjoin the art dealer from displaying the painting, but the court dismissed his suit as "frivolous and dilatory of the Court's calendar", but he at least got the judge to indulge in a little art criticism in its finding that the painting was "innocent, but not very good"!

I believe that the only thing Paris has seen along this line was the wealthy eccentric lady (ever notice how wealthy people are eccentric and the rest of us are just nuts?) who bought overcoats for statues to wear in the winter. In the summer, they could let it all hang out, but she didn't want the poor things to be cold.

[Leigh Witchel]

The Forsythe work pictured in Ballet Review is Duo, made in 1996. Nederlands Dans Theater just danced it in April, amusingly enough on a program with so much gratuitous nudity that Duo seemed downright modest in comparison!

[Petra]

I think I saw Deborah Bull dance an excerpt from a Forsythe 'ballet' in a documentary TV program about her career - and she definitely was not wearing a bra.

I doubt that program will be shown on a US network any time soon.

[Alexandra]

In Flemming Flindt's "The Triumph of Death," choreographed for the Royal Danish Ballet in the early 1970s, he was nude (and sprayed wit red paint), his wife was nude (and shook it, shook it....) and most of the female corps de ballet was nude. I've been told that no one protested at the time; they thought it was liberating.

When they revived the ballet in the mid-1990s, it was a different story. No problem getting the leads to be nude -- and photographs of them in costume, as it were, appeared in the local press -- but many of the women protested that it was degrading and they would not dance nude. (I don't remember the resolution of this, whether those women didn't need to participate in the ballet, or they wore some scant hints of clothing.)

[atm711]

he was nude (and sprayed wit red paint), his wife was nude (and shook it, shook it....)

Sprayed ALL over ---and 'shook' what? :sweating:

[dirac]

I don’t like to see nudity in a ballet. Sometimes it’s permissible in a play, but I don’t see how it can ever be appropriate for a non-naturalistic art form like ballet. I find it distracting – not in a sexual way, but my mind starts wandering along the lines of “Aren’t they cold? Oh, look, cellulite,” and so forth. I also feel sorry for the performers (although I suppose that without a certain exhibitionist streak you wouldn’t be onstage in the first place).

As I was watching Mark Morris’ “Sylvia” at San Francisco Ballet, at one point I wondered idly how Morris was going to work a major butt display into the proceedings. Not only did he work it in, but it was a nice naked one, for Endymion, natch, and as the poor dancer lay there in all his glory I imagined him thinking, You know, Igor Youskevitch never had to do this..................