Nudity as a Unifying Figure. Uses of the Naked Body in French Choreography Starting from the 1990s

Abstract

The essay examines the aesthetic research carried out over the last thirty years in France by an archipelago of dancers, on the image of the body and the uses of the naked body in particular. More precisely, it is a study that provides valid examples about the choreographers have given shape to real figures of the nude, through precise postures (horizontality, verticality and reversals) and disappearances of the body, following the idea of an object body, or instead, a subject body. The hypothesis explored here is that the nude in dance has become above all a figure of style, able to federate artists around common practices and shared poetics.