Thursday, 13 September 2007

May Contain Dancing

There is an advert in Time Out this week for a new dance piece called Touch Wood. It shows two naked dancers entwined, and the tag-line is: "a season of naked ideas danced on a bare wooden floor". Then at the bottom of the advert is a small note: "Warning: may not contain nudity".

It's pretty unusual to have a negative warning like that. You can't imagine the same sort of thing for a film. The poster for Shrek 4 probably won't have the note: "Warning: may not contain violence, sex or real people."

They probably had to put it there because of a case a few years ago when someone complained about the lack of nudity in a dance production at Sadlers Wells. I'd love to have been there when he made the complaint:

"When I saw the production I was dismayed and disgusted! The only reason I went to this show was because of the nudity."
"You went to Sadlers Wells for the nudity?"
"Yes. I could have gone to Soho or the internet but I saw the poster and expected to see hot naked babes in the premier dance theatre in Islington."
"Right. Presumably you'd want this complaint to be anonymous?"
"Oh yes. I'm a theatre reviewer."

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