Ask the Critic: Lewis Segal

Question: Why do dancers wear such revealing costumes?

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Segal: Ever since the Renaissance, the most idealized depictions of the human body in Western painting, sculpture and dance have been inspired by the art of ancient Greece. And that art gloried in the naked truth. The noble proportions of the nude statues from that culture have always conditioned the body imagery of classical ballet and other forms of Western dance, so that even when dancers are fully covered, fabrics that form a second skin allow the full line of the torso and limbs to be seen.

In addition, the sensuality of dance -- its display of beautiful bodies and, by implication, the pleasures of the flesh -- has often deliberately undermined the societal norms of repressive times and regimes, which is why dancers have so frequently been considered disreputable: a bad influence. That old Judeo-Christian split between flesh and spirit doesn’t mean much, does it, when a dancer can embody both simultaneously?

Finally, just about everybody likes to look. Classic 1960s postmodern choreographer Yvonne Rainer wrote that when she was doing a series of movement experiments -- brainy pieces working through formal problems -- she discovered that if she kept her dancers in their underwear, the audience didn’t leave.