Sydney Festival – ‘Nude Live’ at the Art Gallery of NSW

N
ude Live at the Art Gallery of New South Wales is anything but ‘still life’.

I ponder what the first patrons of the Art Gallery of NSW when it opened in 1874 would have thought of 'Nude Live'

Still setting-up on Day 1 of Sydney Festival; no nudity - till I get inside the Art Gallery!

ancers twist, entangle and plunge; in the nude; unselfconscious, trusting and brave, emulating the extraordinary art and sculptures in the exhibition of ‘Nude: art from the Tate Collection’.

The choreography for the hour-long ‘performance’ displays the creative talent of Sydney Dance Company’s Rafael Bonacela. The choice of music further deepens my involvement in the whole experience.

I was fortunate to be invited to the opening performance this evening – a wonderful collaboration between the Sydney Dance Company, the Art Gallery of NSW, and Sydney Festival.

The initial voyeurism (inevitable), and the novel of nudity very quickly gives way to an appreciation of the dance. The closeness and audience involvement with the dancers in the informality of a gallery setting completes a spectacular triumvirate of exhilarating connectedness.

I know those of my friends who’d wish I had more of the ‘inside’ shots to illustrate this event more in the flesh, but you have to be content. I can’t go around photographing a person’s bottom or ‘dangly bits’, even in this day and age.