I clicked on a link hoping to see some boobies … oh, c'mon, that's not why. This is the New York Times.
I clicked on a link expecting to sneer at some bluenosery, due to the blurb ("Bared flesh is common in experimental modern dance. And sometimes — infrequently — it succeeds."), but I was happily surprised by Alastair Macaulay's "Nakedness in Dance, Taken to Extremes." Here are just three of the reasons why.
• I am now aware of the pejorative term Hooray Henrys.
• I just love inside baseball asides, even when I have no idea what they mean, just because the precision sounds so good: “Crotch (all the Joseph Beuys references in the world cannot heal the pain, confusion, regret, cruelty, betrayal, or trauma....)”
• A rare sensible statement on art versus porn:
When I tell friends of these viewings, they inevitably ask: Where is the line between art and pornography? But there’s always been a huge overlap between the two; you can see scenes of copulation on Greek vases and Indian temples. What’s more, many works of art have seemed pornographic without nakedness. Many of us are tempted to talk as if art = good, pornography = bad. Yet that’s wrong too. Much art is poor, while the novels of the Marquis de Sade are pornography taken to a brilliant, horrifying and extraordinary peak.
The entire article is much more graceful than snippets presented in bulleted list form would suggest. Go read, for pleasure. And rejoice in your membership in the cultural elite, or at least your want to be.
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