There are several performances in the 2019 calendar of Bakelit Multi Art Center where the spectators take off their clothes. What does it add to the performances? What is the added value for the spectators and the artists? In relation with the performances I spoke with Márta Ladjánszki, artistic director of L1 Association and inventor of the performance series.
LetMeC – Photo: NaVKE
Please tell me about how the first naturist performance was born where not only the performers on stage but also the spectators were naked.
The dance professionals and the audience are also familiar with my past 25 years of creative activity and presence, and know that using, showing, and expanding the body in movement and motion is what I am very much interested in. The “body is not taboo” for me.
As an independent artist and performer I always tried to work and articulate clearly, and this included that the body’s vision and the changes on the body were part of my performances. At the beginning of my career this appeared mainly in my solos, and with time, as I involved other performers or co-creators, I expected from them this openness and honest mapping too. As a creator I did my best to make a clear decision about it, not to undress my performers for its own sake, but because it adds to the given topic, direction.
In 2007, the Virtual Association of Naturists (NaVKE) have found me in relation to the performance Withering Ecstasy – body is not taboo, and they indicated that, reading my descriptions and hearing about my relationship to the body, they would really like to see a dance performance in a naturist environment, which as an opportunity not existed until then and neither since then.
For me, who (almost as a pioneer in the field of dance in Hungary) has been working with nudity a lot, it was obviously a great challenge to look at my own work also with an eye that what happens when we have nude spectators. We have gained a lot of experience – I say this in plural as the performers have also collected exciting experiences. The cooperation with the naturists was successful, but after a while it stopped.
In 2017, I wanted to throw one of my performances and the spectators into deep water, with all of us getting undressed and find new meaning and observation possibilities in this way. Unfortunately, my performance was censored, we could not perform the piece without textiles. There is also a strong prude thinking within the dance world and they do not understand what is good about the spectators (too) being naked. They should try it once and will understand. In my performances the use of nudity has never been provocative. But lately, perceiving the everydays’ operation and the professional scene, my call has a kind of provocation still.
I decided to have a dance performance series that is specifically performed in front of naked spectators. So after the censorship I asked the NaVKE to be partners in planning more performances in this way and put them in a row. In 2018 the Bakelit Multi Art Center accepted the event three times (it was the only venue giving space for this kind of experiment and research), the first two were still private, but the third was opened to the wider audience in the frame of L1danceFest. We got good feedback and it was positive in itself that not only the members of NaVKE came to the show.
In 2019 we will continue the series. The opening performance will be my anniversary piece entitled 25/45. I have been in my career as choreographer for 25 years and I turned 45 this year.
What kind of experience did you gain with the first performance? What kind of feedback did you get?
I always consider it important to have a talk after the show if possible. This helps not only to understand what you have seen and how you have seen it, but it is also a great help to me to put together the answers to the questions about nudity, the performer’s nudity and the nudity of the spectators – all in an artistic setting. From these I try to understand and process the significance of our work. In the current situation the most important thing is to accept ourselves and each other.
Is it a natural situation for you to be naked on stage? Does it depend on self-confidence or acceptance of our own body?
Nothing is natural. For a long time I was not even a naturist / nudist. But since being in my creative career I have believed in the uniqueness of the body and in the beauty of every body and shape. If I have self-confidence that is because I have many years of experience and work behind me.
Does it require a different point of view from you and the performers if the spectators are also nude?
It does not require a different point of view, but it requires a much more intense presence. The example I always tell is when the performance of Withering Ecstasy was performed for naked spectators (for the first time). As part of the event we talked to each other after the show and it was exciting to understand what happened. As a creator – although I was a bit part of the play, but I was more often observing it – I saw an unbelievably concentrated performance. My performers focused on each other with all their nerve fibers and it became a very tight performance. What the performers have pointed out was a reason for this, as the body of the naked spectators had a completely different heat dissipation than the dressed ones. Simply: the naked bodies (who sat in a semicircular arc around the space of the performance) all sent extra heat to the stage, making my performers sweat more and hence helt on to each other or worked in solo more strongly. The overall interplay generated by the spectators has improved.
So far, I have only had a performance where artists were naked. I imagine a naturist performance also on the part of the spectators can be quite intimate. Have you experienced such a difference? What does this give to the performance?
Perhaps the most authentic would be to refer to the writing of Dóri Albert which she wrote about LetMeC_natur, because the point is that how an outsider will be part of the whole… [the full article is available here]
“The answer is only available to the ones who accept to free themselves from all their clothes in the space of the performance and are ready to watch the whole performance naked. (…)
Not any performance is suited for the participation of naked performers and audience. Ladjánszki and Varga were clearly not adjusting the piece to the concept of nakedness, but from nakedness they created one – the awareness present in the whole work could only come true this way. The other side of the thing is the simple nakedness lacking all kind of multiple possibilities of connotation, which is rarely experienced, and created a strong communal encounter.”
Can such a performance involve the audience’s activity?
You have to come to our LetMeC_natur perfromance on the 6th of June, as it is just about this. [More info about the performance in June]
If I know well, the audience will sit in a circle on the jubilee performance in March, so the space is open from all sides, almost voyeurist. What can the spectators expect who have not been on this kind of performance?
My 25/45 performance will be part of a jubilee performance series. I started it 5 years ago, then titled 20/40 and in the recent years we have been rewatching my previous works on video, but there was no live performance in the series.
This year there will be. And I only ask those who buy tickets and come to see my piece (me) to take off their clothes. Luckily, the space of Bakelit MAC is suitable for this, the spectators (only those who have undertaken the above) enter the space together and take off their clothes. It creates safe environment for everyone.
The 25/45 performance is not interactive – in the traditional sense of the word. The spectators watch my performance in a close semicircle, which has a retrospective significance too. The space is not completely open as we will be in a theater environment, but the space will be ours, we will be in it together.
[Interview made by Blanka Rákos, Inside-out blog magazine; translated by Emese Kovács]
Performance in March: Ladjánszki Márta: 25/45 FB TICKET
Performance in June: L1 Egyesület – LetMeC_natur TICKET
Photo: Roland Szabo