“N A K E D is a celebration of expression.
N A K E D aims to inspire audiences to champion their individuality.
N A K E D celebrates vulnerability and honesty.
N A K E D Is the connection with music.
N A K E D is friendship”.
It’s not often you wander into a theatre auditorium to find two young semi-naked persons wrapped together tightly in clingfilm. Not since that long-weekend I spent in Berlin a few years back. I should perhaps clarify that neither were fully naked, before you get too over-excited. The pre-publicity warned only of “mild nudity”. There was nothing on show that you wouldn’t risk seeing on a Saturday night out in Cardiff.
We took our seats, the performance started and our players – Paige-Marie Baker-Carroll and Luke Vincent – started to emerge from their plastic cocoon. I nearly wrote ‘sheathe’ there, but I didn’t because I’m classy. They stretched and flexed and slowly broke free. Perhaps too slowly, I might argue this opening carried on a little too long. But it was hypnotically effective. The clingfilm stretching and rending with a vaguely distressing plucking and creaking. Eventually both were free, and they flopped to the stage like new-born calves.
Safe to say: they had my attention.
What followed was an intense but involving and often very witty exhibition of strength, balance and precision. There was a burst of physical clowning near the beginning of the show that was near-impossible flurry of body parts appearing and disappearing from the black drapes at the back of the stage. There were stretches of contemporary dance. There were feats of power and balance that wouldn’t have looked out of place inside a Big Top.
But there was a narrative, too. A thread binding the acts of athleticism and movement. An investigation of intimacy and separation. An expression of vulnerability and fortitude. An exploration of flying and falling.
A look at what people are capable of when they’re willing to allow themselves to be truly N A K E D.
