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ABOUT • EST.2005
The story of Dance Naked
Creative
Sex-positive theater, with a happy ending. Twenty years of stories about joy, pleasure and discovery — and the courage it takes to tell them out loud.
by Eleanor O’Brien, artistic director
WHY "DANCE NAKED"
In the summer of 2005 I filled out my first fringe festival application — Toronto, notoriously challenging — and was confronted by a blank: company name ______.
It was just me, myself and I. But I wanted a name that held the essence of the art I had to offer. I imagined people dancing naked on a beach at sunset, and wrote it in that blank space with enormous satisfaction.
I wanted to create art that liberates people from shame, and art that invokes a sense of joy.
Ha! Turns out many people hear “Dance Naked” and picture something very different. I’ve had audience members ask when the stripper would be coming.
All bodies,
all shapes,
free from judgement
full of life
Sometimes we do. But more often, we are telling STORIES — vulnerable, ecstatic and hopeful.
“Do we at least GET NAKED?”
Twenty Years in chapters
2005
GGG: Dominatrix forDummies
My brief attempt to become a professional dominatrix in New York City (despite zero experience in kink), married to discovering Gabrielle Roth and ecstatic dance, and bookended by a seminar on Radical Self Lust —with audience participation. It was my entrée into sex-positive theater, and into a whole ecosystem of BDSM, LGBTQ, ENM and a slew of other letters that opened my mind to so many possibilities.
2009-2012
Inviting Desire
At Portland’s brand-new Fertile Ground festival, I put out a call for actresses to devise a show about women’s sexual fantasies. One monologue was performed in a baptismal font. We sold out every night. We touched the audience — with their consent — and discovered something primal that only live theater can do.
From that came an oldRV and a scrappy band of feminist theater crossing Canada to close the orgasm gap (Winnipeg may never be the same). Then Pleasure, Permission, Possibility and The Dawn of Sex, which brought ethical non-monogamy, asexuality and our first audience cuddle pit to the stage.
Funny, feminist, and hot AF.
2010s
Seducing the Muse, What is Erotic? & Revelations
I stepped back from producing to help other people develop their own erotic material: sexed-up theater games and NSFW prompts that ended in student performances that blew people away. What is Erotic? was my first time directing men, who bared their souls and their secret arousals. Revelations grew from a friend’s artful-striptease house party into evenings where the vulnerable became synonymous with the erotic.
“Resurrects within us both our deepest, darkest secrets and wildest pleasures… It was riveting.”
- AMBIT MAGAZINE
2015
Lust & Marriage
What does it mean to love someone with your whole heart, and no longer want to have sex with them? I toured that question across Canada, to a tent at Burning Man (for half a dozen people), and on to London, Brussels and Amsterdam. Meanwhile, Come Play! promised sexy stories and silliness, and Stand Up Smut gave people an open mic for their erotic genius.
2018-2020
Sex We Can! & How to Really,Really? Really! Love a Woman
An ensemble uprising that imagined the sexual future we want to live into — including Cult of Cunnilingus, in which I played a camp counselor at PDX Goddess Worship 101. That monologue grew into a full-length solo show about my journey from the shame of rejection to the glory of being revered. I toured it until the last possible second: COVID shut it down on March 14, 2020.
2020-2021
A cult on Zoom, and a new name
During the pandemic I learned to hold safe space online — first with a sex-positive speed-dating venture called Spinner, then with a show built for Zoom, where this time I brought the cult with me. Inside it, I first introduced Plan V: a global organization that exists to honor pussy, protect pussy and acknowledge its role in our lives. People wanted to know how to join. If it doesn’t exist, they said, it definitely should.
In 2021 Dance Naked Productions became Dance Naked Creative. The censorship noose around anything sexual was tightening — I’d been taken down from Instagram and YouTube — and the work had grown beyond productions into workshops, storytelling events, coaching and directing. And yes, I should have changed the name to something safer. But I’m stubborn.
2020-2025
Plan V
How did we transition to a peaceful, goddess-loving society in the space of ten years? We started by prioritizing female pleasure. I premiered Plan V: The Joyful Cult of PussyWorship at the Vagina Museum in London, flyered my heart out on the cobblestones of Edinburgh for my 50th birthday, and discovered just how uncomfortable that title makes people. It became Pussy Parables and Epiphanies, then Viva laVulvalution, and then The Rise of Reverence. (Along the way, Stripe dropped me for “selling sex.”)
In Fresno and Hawaii I began holding Plan V gatherings, helping people share their pussystories in a place that feels safe — and make yoni-inspired art to take home.
In 2024 I brought Plan V to Fertile Ground on Zoom, six nights of Acts of Pleasure Activism. The audience joined a live Plan V Gathering, heard the members’ conversion and healing stories, and voted on which acts of pleasure we’d take on next.
2025
Canadian Fringe Festival Tour
In 2005 I toured my very first solo show to fringe festivals across Canada. Twenty years later, I went back with Plan V: The Rise of Reverence — Cincinnati first (not technically Canada, but they asked nicely), then Montréal, Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
I rewrote the show for this tour. The world had gotten scarier, and Plan V got a little darker to match. We filmed it at the University of Winnipeg, so if you missed it, patreon supporters can watch the whole thing.
My patrons paid for this tour. I still can’t quite believe it. Thank you.
2026 SPRING
Igniting Desire
Seventeen years after Inviting Desire sold out the very first Fertile Ground festival, I came back with a nod to it. When you get older, it gets harder to find your arousal. Desire changes. I took a class with a woman who said you have to chase the flame, blow on the coals, put more effort in, and I wanted to know: how are other people fanning the flames?
So I gathered an ensemble of women and we made a show about it, with director Christine McHugh as my co-collaborator. My rule for the whole process was: is it fun? If not, we’re not doing it. It sold out its entire Fertile Ground run, so we added four more nights at the Chapel Theatre in Milwaukie, and every night the audience stood up at the end. (Which, ya know, doesn’t suck.)
“Uplifting, life-affirming, and a super sexy night at the theatre.”
- BROADWAY WORLD
2026 AUTUMN
Reverence
I talked about it for years. Now Plan V TheMovement has its own home, and a weekly gathering for women called Reverence — stories, a shared altar, dancing, grief, rage and hope. Because I truly believe the antidote to rage is reverence.
all along the way
Workshops, Classes & Events
Between the shows, the work never stopped.
There have been erotic writing workshops for women over fifty and for writers of every gender. Storytelling soirées with blindfolds available and cuddling encouraged. An erotic open mic. A Mother’s Day masturbate-a-thon that sent every dollar to Planned Parenthood. Costume-making parties that put a sea of pink vulvas on the march. Patron parties, Zoom taboos, thirty days of pleasure, and a retreat for women entering the wild of menopause. Different formats, same promise: a brave, joyful place to say what you’ve never said out loud.
To co-create a world that reveres the sacred feminine, that honors the power of pussy.
Yeah. I’m happy if that’s my legacy.
Press
Eleanor O’Brien’s naked truth
Eleanor O’Brien’s joyful cult
New theater from Eleanor O’Brien and Nikki Weaver
Q&A: Eleanor O’Brien’s ‘Dominatrix for Dummies’
Spotlighting Portland solo artist Eleanor O’Brien
Love, marriage, and polyamory
Confidence: Eleanor O’Brien
Sex advice from Eleanor O’Brien
Eleanor O’Brien: Fertile Ground Hall of Fame
‘Resistance can be joyful’: Portland protest artists speak up
Podcasts
Eleanor O’Brien talks sex & Plan V
Writer, performer and facilitator
Erotic expression with Eleanor O’Brien
Love outside of the romance novel
Celebrating female pleasure
Eleanor O’Brien, founder of Dance Naked Productions
Orbiting Hot ’n’ Throbbing