This sensuous work by young Danish dancer and choreographer Mette Ingvartsen seeks to disrupt and interrogate our preconceptions about nudity, sexuality and pleasure; it features 12 nude dancers interacting with each other and various objects in “a presentation of seven different possibilities of how to understand pleasure.”
Ingvartsen has a longstanding interest in exploring sexuality and the public sphere, through works including 69 Positions, to come and 21 Pornographies.
Melbourne Festival artistic director Jonathan Holloway says her 2015 work 7 Pleasures “redefines the way bodies move in space. It’s finding a new language [for dance].”
The nudity is essential – not just for the effect of the piece, but from its conception. “By taking off our clothes and by experimenting with these sensual materials, certain codes of behavior were taken away,” Ingvartsen says. “There are many things that have to be cleared in order to set up a frame to enable people to work together in this manner.”
Check out our Melbourne Festival 2017 highlights hit list, and our Melbourne Festival Feasts guide.