Nakedness in Dance

Nakedness in Dance, Taken to ExtremesBenjamin Asriel, left, and Burr Johnson in “Fort Blossom

 revisited.”Credit...Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesHOW do you react to the look of a naked body onstage? Thirty-four years ago, as part of a friend’s bachelor party, I went to a London strip club with a group of seven other men. We were all in our early 20s; most of them were distinctly upper-crust; some qualified as what the English call chinless wonders and Hooray Henrys.

Unfortunately, the show underwhelmed. Some of our party, good sports, feigned enthusiasm. Not all, though. As the show reached its supposed climax in a fatuously unerotic male-female nude duet, one chap leaned across the table and said, in piercing Bertie Wooster tones: “I say, Leo! Are you getting together a party for the Caledonian Ball this year? Because, if so, I’m frightfully interested.” (The Royal Caledonian Ball is a grand event of traditional Scottish dancing.)

That was the year I became a critic; I had no inkling how much stage nakedness awaited me. In experimental modern dance, it is now a widespread condition. A bigger surprise has been to find that sometimes — infrequently, but sometimes — it succeeds.

And when it does, it changes our perception of muscles and flesh; it plants new meanings and ideas. Its effect is one of drama. Meanwhile the exposure of the unadorned body has even started to alter the world of ballet