The naked body has long been a source of creative inspiration and of moral alarm, both in and out of artistic contexts. The reaction to the “issue” of nudity is relevant to all art forms, but to dance in a way like no other, as our bodies are the crux of the form’s expression. Nudity can reveal a truer depiction of the body in its raw condition – particularly of a live, moving body – and hence, can awaken deep fears and desires in us all.

It is not nudity or nakedness that objectifies; it is the way in which subjects are conveyed in their nude or naked state. Religious or secular, ancient or modern, live performance or otherwise, the implication is that objectified subjects are aware of being seen, without concomitantly ‘seeing’ themselves. They are not naked in their own right, only as seen by the viewer, and hence they forgo their fundamental sense of self; to create the space of objectification that so antagonizes our society. John Berger distinguishes between “nude” and “naked” in his book Ways of Seeing, “To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognised for oneself”¹ . A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude. For art critic Kenneth Clark, to be “naked” is simply to be without clothes, and the “nudeis a naked body conveyed in a work of art”². As a spectator, Clark is choosing to deny the sexuality and individuality of the ‘nude’, limiting his Way(s)of Seeing.

Nudity is not a categorical ‘point’; it is an inseparable aspect of every one of us, and it can become a passage to enlightenment. As a model in many of Bill Henson photographs, my own experience of being depicted naked in art has been illuminating. I found it liberating to be naked in an artistic context. The naked body speaks a different language and possesses idiosyncratic sensibilities, tones and freedoms. When I was naked in these photo-shoots, I was, in a sense, dancing, moving with a unique sensation. Nudity can transport us to a different conscious reality, infusing in us a powerful sense of awareness and presence.

Luke George describes his experience of performing semi-naked in his new work ‘The Unnamed Feeling’ as, “a different physical and conscious state to be in” ³ , allowing him to “think and move differently”Luke George.⁴ . For George, “it both was and wasn’t about the nudity”⁵ ; he employed his semi-nakedness in order to “affect and induce particular sensations and perceptions”⁶ for him and his audience, yet also transcend, through the process of his work, the strange impression of a male wearing only T-shirt, socks and shoes, a cap and a thin silk veil.

George’s deliberately weird semi-nakedness was in fact partially influenced by, “the way (he) was working when creating and rehearsing this piece, in (his) bedrooms and living rooms, often half naked, and it felt comfortable and supported (his) experience of performing it, so (he) kept doing it”[.

The naked body is both traditional and radical. It always has and will continue to have a necessary relationship to art

The full nudity in Deborah Hay’s work ‘O beautiful’ (2002) (renamed ‘Beauty’), a solo that the prolific artist performed at age 62, came about because of her overheated rehearsal conditions, in a similarly organic process. Hay explains, “What I experienced performing that piece, without any clothes on, was so phenomenal that it had to be the costume”⁷, illustrating the greater sense of perspicuity that nudity can allow in the body. Did she inflict harm on herself, or others, exposing her nakedness to the public? No. Is it an honest, open gesture in her work, appropriate to ‘Beauty’? Yes. Does she ‘offend’ or make anyone ‘uncomfortable’? Maybe. But who wants to be perpetually comfortable? And since when has it been the role of art to render people so?

As an audience, we choose what we look at. We become aware that we can be seen, and hence aware that we are part of the visible world, just as Adam and Eve became conscious of themselves when gaining knowledge of “good and evil”. We are faced with the choice either to reach for the nearest fig leaf, and complain to the government, or to experience our self-awareness, take in the physical world around us, learn, transform, and grow.

The attacks on visual artists such as Henson are generally made without consideration for how the nudity is inseparable from the power and aesthetic value of the work. They focus on the “moral” damage that nudity might inflict on both the subject and spectator. In a live performance, the issue of nudity is perceived differently. Perhaps its ‘live-ness’ renders the “issue” less about the welfare of the subject, and more about the validity of nudity within the work. The media has attacked dance performances, such as Phillip Adams’ Tomorrow, that incorporate nudity in these terms.

There isn’t anything morally wrong with a depiction that may provoke sexual attraction, a reaction that is as subjective as we are diverse. What frightens us by such displays and ideas is both our transportation from our habitual zones of comfort, and the envisaged reality of the subject, out of the work’s context.

The naked body is both traditional and radical. It always has and will continue to have a necessary relationship to art. The question now, is how? George “find(s) a completely naked body to be quite a classical form, in how it reads and how it feels to perform”⁸. George’s interest in a “contemporary body”⁹ may in fact paradoxically be achieved by reverting to notions of concealment.

The key is that, in life and art, nakedness is a process, not a state. We are our bodies; our bodies are our selves. Nudity generates self-knowledge and power. The body is both historic and modern, something that we cannot change, providing us with the choice to find new and enriching ways of experiencing and witnessing it. What is a body of the present, and what presence does it create?