Luminato video project exposes the naked truth in dance
Choreographer DA Hoskins presents 20-minute installation that is raw, poetic and mysterious
If you happened to be at the Hearn on an unseasonably cold day in early May you might have encountered an unexpected sight: 13 dancers, men and women, mostly naked, scampered around the former generating plant pursued by a team of photographer/ videographers led by provocateur par excellence, choreographer and visual artist DA Hoskins.
The result of this bone-chilling exercise is a 20-minute video installation called The Coating Project that runs throughout the Luminato Festival. Depending on your attitudes toward nudity, eroticism, sensuality and unsettling imagery, The Coating Project may shock, delight — or simply bore.
On a not-much-warmer early afternoon on Sunday, as visitors began to stream into Luminato’s new Hearn hub, only a few ventured into the secluded alcove that houses The Coating Project. Prominent signs warn of graphic content and nudity “not suitable for children.”
It’s a small, even cosy space with a few chairs; a dozen or so people and it would feel crowded. A flat screen positioned with its back to the passing throng plays The Coating Project in a continuous loop. Some passersby were immediately warned off by the signs and hurried by. Others sauntered in but soon left. None seemed outraged. A few stayed the course.
A middle-aged couple was clearly enthralled, quietly exchanging observations that they later shared.
“It has this extraordinary apocalyptic feel to it,” offered the man.
“It’s very tender at times,” said the woman. “I love the way the group unfurls and regroups like an organism; this contrast of the building and the people animating it.”
And the nudity? “Not a problem,” said the woman. “I know some people are uncomfortable with nudity, but we’ve all been naked at some point.”
Toronto is a generally easygoing city. We have our own legal clothingoptional beach, one of very few on the continent. Hundreds of thousands of people, whole families, routinely turn out for Pride, knowing there will be lots of exposed flesh and even some total nudity.
For arts lovers, nudity is commonplace, in galleries and onstage. The human body may be presented as an object of beauty, worthy of contemplation, or as tormented and hellbound, particularly in religiously themed artworks.
Other times, as in David Hare’s The Judas Kiss, a recent Mirvish presentation starring Rupert Everett, naked bodies are offered matter-of-factly in the act of coitus.
On the dance scene, Hoskins’ home turf, nudity is frequently deployed for a variety of purposes and hardly ever for titillation.
At the Hearn on Friday, dancer choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith will perform naked in her 40-minute solo A Study on Effort, presumably, as is often the case with nudity in dance, to expose fully the workings of the body but also as a universal emblem of human vulnerability: nakedness as a state of pure being.
Hoskins’ use of nudity is often considered provocative, although he’d prefer to see himself as doing everyone a favour.
Over an Americano, Hoskins explained that as a gay teenager growing up Catholic in North Bay, Ont., he felt the full societal weight of repression. His life as an artist has been his search for the kind of freedom of identity he believes we should all enjoy and sexual expression is top of that list.
As far as he’s concerned, an appetite for nude images, pornographic or not, is part of human nature. “And I don’t think of any of it as wrong.”
Hoskins believes this appetite reflects the fact that we’ve never been educated to understand and explore and celebrate the full dimensions of our own bodies and their natural needs, although he’s emphatic that nudity and sexuality can be quite separate things.
The Coating Project is certainly raw at times but equally poetic and mysterious, contrasting the humanity of the dancers as they populate a hauntingly desolate space.
The naked body is observed in tight shots for its sheer sculptural splendour. Other sequences, such as those shot in the former Hearn locker room, crackle with erotic potential. At one point there’s an erect penis painted bright red, a stunning symbol of virility and potential danger.
Danielle Baskerville, a frequent Hoskins collaborator, moves through The Coating Project wearing a black Victorian gown with William Ellis, co-founder of the now defunct Videofag, naked on a leash, walking on all fours behind her.
Religious imagery, some of which will certainly offend the devout, is a running theme with dancer Damian Norman, a mesmerizing presence as a quasi-Christ figure. There’s what Hoskins calls a “baptism into repression” scene and a Last Supper with Jesus and his disciples in false beards on swivelling office chairs.
“I’m anti-repression,” says Hoskins. “I’m attracted to risk, to go where I’m not supposed to go. I resist taboos and political correctness.” The Coating Project is at the Hearn, 440 Unwin Ave., until June 26; luminatofestival.com or 416-368-4849.