The revival of Daniel Léveillé’s Amour, Acide et Noix is described as “Offering nudity as frank and free of false modesty, the skin is the body’s one true costume.”

You had me at nudity. 

It’s an interesting effect… the mere mention of a performance piece with no covering, dancers completely nude throughout, and the reverberations of what that even means to view and be viewed, let alone performed.  

I confess there’s a string in me that resonates with journalist Kena Herod when writing in reference to this piece in 2004, about nudity in performance:  “I still find myself grappling with the question of what a nude body onstage means (outside of strip bars).”  There’s a level of discomfort that runs a gamut between pearl clutching and voyeuristic curiosity. 

As an intimacy professional, my career is focused on supporting such works as this – to offer my skills as advocate, liaison and choreographer for the staging of scenes in performance involving simulated sex, nudity, and hyperexposure  (“the baring of a part of the body that an actor would not normally reveal in a public situation”). The role was created to uphold the standard of the director’s (or choreographer’s) vision while maintaining the boundaries performers have voiced when it comes to consenting to these themes.  

It is also a purview of my work to consider the audience being presented to – has care and consideration been given to those who are viewing the art?  Experiencing bodies on screen is one thing; sharing a room with a nude human in three dimensions, fully expressing movement, while sitting fully clothed is quite another.

Nudity can be presented with many different connotations, sexual or otherwise, as is defined by the context of the performance piece. American culture has grappled since its inception with how nudity is perceived, rooted in European colonization and the proselytization of Puritanical Christianity; as Adeline Marie Masquelier says in their work Dirt, Undress, and Difference: “Being properly dressed in Western cultures was so full of meanings that the scanty dress or nudity of others needed an explanation, which was generally provided by religion.” 

I was able to view a brief excerpt of Amour, originated in 2001, online (Youtube is forever), to get a glimpse of what creator Léveillé’s website describes as speaking to the “infinite tenderness of touch, the harshness of life, and the desire for avoidance or escape from these bodies, often so heavy.”  Ultimately, scenes of intimacy are about vulnerability, which is certainly what the description of the piece aligns with, although I had to allow myself to encounter the gamut of discomfort in order to settle into the deeper experience of the work. 

I mention to students constantly there is a difference between being uncomfortable in your work and art, and being unsafe.  The place of discomfort is one to pursue in creation as it is the place where growth and discovery are often found– so too, in the viewing of work– to disturb the comfortable, as it were.  An intimacy professional certainly stands at the crossroads between these important distinctions, helping to create a space that is confident (not comfortable) to do vulnerable, risky work.   

Can the audience allow themselves the opportunity to be vulnerable and receive this most stark expression of it?  It takes a space created, knowing the performers are confident in their ability to be so vulnerable without harm, that viewers can then engage with the work, drawing them past any initial prejudice to find an intimate connection.   

Judi Lewis Ockler (she/her) is an intimacy professional, stunt performer, fight director and variety artist based in NYC with over 100 credits in film, TV, off-Broadway, and academia. She curates groundbreaking classes on Intimacy in Performance at NYU Tisch and teaches Intimacy and Violence in Performance at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, and Atlantic Theater School. Judi facilitates workshops for multiple academic and arts institutions, helping shape the future of intimacy and empathy in the performing arts. www.judilewisockler.com