First things first : you ’ re about to see a lot of uncovered flesh .
What if they threw a revolution and nobody came ? The 1960s and 70s were supposed to be a time when sexual shackles were shattered and liberation was won for all . Don ’ t believe the hype .
Those seeds of personal freedom have blossomed into raunch culture and revenge porn , the fetish of smart gadgets and the seduction of the screen .
Mette Ingvartsen ’ s 7 Pleasures bursts through all of this with a libidinal energy that refuses to be contained . The Danish choreographer describes the work as “ a reflection on how sexual and erotic bodies are very often represented as flat two-dimensional images , and on the potentiality of theatre to treat these bodies differently .” It ’ s an understated summation of a piece of contemporary dance performance that prods and probes at the unexamined scars the sexual revolution never got around to addressing .
First things first : you ’ re about to see a lot of uncovered flesh . Yet for all its sartorial fearlessness , some commentators have noted that the nudity of 7 Pleasures isn ’ t necessarily sexual . It ’ s a point Ingvartsen finds amusing .
“ That says a lot about the way we understand the word ‘ sexual ’ today ! If there is no penetration , there is no sex , right ? In this piece there is no penetration , but I still think what we do can be considered a form of sexual practice . The performers pose questions of what pleasure is , of how we feel it , and of how it can change our bodies to sense pleasure in different and unfamiliar ways . The piece is created through different modes of intimate togetherness .”
Nudity is an immediate entry point to thinking about the ongoing hangups that exist when it comes to sexuality , and while western culture is abundant with images of the bared body , the shared experience of theatre exposes our inherited assumptions regarding privacy , intimacy and the body .
“ People often associate the 7 in 7 Pleasures with the seven deadly sins , and there is definitely a link , but the piece isn ’ t meant as a concrete response to the sins ,” says Ingvartsen . “ It ’ s a reflection on how a certain cultural history is still living in our bodies today , and how it influences our sexual practices . For instance , I find it interesting to see how sexuality is still very much connected to religion , and how mechanisms of guilt and shame still operate within our bodies .”
For 7 Pleasures Ingvartsen developed a choreographic principal named ‘ spilling ’. Unlike the airbrushed , vacuum-sealed and flat-packed eroticism of media-borne sex today , the pansexual erotic energy of the work is one that overreaches its own boundaries , implicating the viewer and erasing the distinction between the desires .
“ The basic idea is to let the performance spill onto the area where the audience is sitting . In the opening scene , the performers undress in the audience . There is a suggestion that the performers ’ bodies are very similar to the bodies of the spectators . Our practices are neither crazy , nor so virtuosic that no one else could imagine doing them . At the same time , we try to include the entire environment into our choreography : the audience is part of it , so are the staircase and the objects around us .”
Scattering sexuality beyond the confines of the individual is one way Ingvartsen responds to the isolating and alienating effects of sexual discourse that hasn ’ t simply been bestowed upon us by media culture , but has been driven into the very fibres of our bodies . “ With 7 Pleasures I was concerned with understanding where we are today in regards to sexuality . How our sexuality is being manipulated and controlled on a molecular level .”
The work is composed of three movements . The first unfetters sexuality from the basic body parts usually given the hard work of pleasure , instead allowing sensuality its place across the