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About
Dance Naked Productions
Hello darlings ~
Dance Naked Productions officially began in 2005 when I toured my first solo show, GGG:Dominatrix for Dummies.
(I was filling out a form for a fringe festival, and they asked my 'company name.' I thought long and hard about the theater i wanted to make - I wanted to tell stories that were joyful and vulnerable. Dance Naked captured that for me - so that's what I wrote down. And I've been explaining it ever since!).
If you are curious about GGG: Dominatrix for Dummies, there is currently no full length video (it's on my to-do list). But you can check out this trailer if you want to get a sense of it. This show is about training to be a dominatrix in NYC, but the heart of it is really about discovering ecstatic dance.
Truth be told, I think of Dance Naked the company as having been born in 2008, when I produced and directed my first ensemble show, Inviting Desire.
That was the year of the first Fertile Ground Festival, and I flung my hat into the ring. Though I'd never directed anything outside of college, I was deeply curious about whether my idea would work. I wanted to turn the fantasies from Nancy Friday's book My Secret Garden into monologues.
I held auditions and had an amazing turn out of incredibly talented women. I cast a group of seven and we began the process of creating a show. But rather than use a book as source material, the women I cast chose to use their own imaginations. We created a show that was original, edgy and sexy af.
Inviting Desire: A Theatrical Aphrodisiac was a surprise hit, and spawned a touring version (Lubricate Your Libido), and two more original productions (Pleasure, Permission, Possibility...and The Dawn of Sex).
At one point, i had a few compilation videos from those shows here on my website, but recently, my account was removed from Vimeo, where those videos were hosted (the censorship of my work has dramatically increased in the last few years). I've decided not to post them publicly. While I am extremely proud of those shows, we are in a different cultural climate around sexuality these days.
Having video made of my productions has never been a high priority for me. I have a huge bias towards the primacy of the live experience. I am belligerent about the importance of BEING IN THE SAME ROOM with one another. Watching the video feels so diminishing. I wanna see you AT the theater. I wanna hug you at the door. I wanna look into your eyes when I look out into the audience. I wanna breath the same air.
But I know that a video is worth a thousand words - so here are some examples from the various Inviting Desires...
While I was on tour, I spent some time in Santa Cruz, and met the women responsible for a local production (and Santa Cruz legend) called What Is Erotic?
The idea behind this show was that anyone could audition. You didn't have to identify as an actor or performer, you just had to have an idea of some kind of sex positive performance piece you wanted to create. The director would help shape your piece and integrate all the performances into one cohesive evening of sex-positive theater. This community cabaret has been playing in Santa Cruz for over a decade, and I wanted to give the idea a try. I'd been wanting to include men (and other genders) for some time, and this provided a pathway to a diversity of experiences. So I created the Portland version.
I loved the format of helping regular people (and some seasoned performers) develop pieces that expressed aspects of their sexuality. So the following year, I decided to create a new show, but one that focused on the revelatory aspects of sharing sexual content. We called that show Revelations.
In 2018, the cultural and political climate inspired another group project, a show called Sex We Can! This show was a vision of the sexual future we wanted to create.
The following video is a compilation from these last three group shows.
I am currently working on a new solo show called How to Really, Really? Really! Love a Woman that explores the fertile subject of Goddess worship (ok, it's really all about eating pussy. Not gonna lie).
You can get a little sneak preview of that show here.
In 2014 I started a small festival of sex-positive theater called Come Inside. I bring shows to Portland that illuminate different aspects of sexuality. That festival turned into a bi-ennial event. Here's a sizzle reel from 2018.
Every once in a while, I'll tell a story on someone else's stage. I've told a couple of stories for Bawdy Storytelling (but sadly, there's no video!)
Here's a story I told for the Mystery Box, a sex-centric show based in Portland, Oregon. This a little bit of an origin story - how I became...me.
The following video is a song I wrote for the second Inviting Desire called Your Body is a Ouija Board. It's one I'm particularly proud of, so I'm sharing it here.
This last piece is called Erotic Watsu, that for some reason is a hit on youtube (well, a hit in the sense that is has more than 5k views). I'm telling you people - live theater does not translate well to video! But maybe I'm a star in Japan or something.
There's a little taste of what we get up to (down on?) here at Dance Naked Productions. But seriously, come to the theater. Everything is better LIVE.
(and I'm so looking forward to meeting you!)
XO
Eleanor
Eleanor O'Brien
Dance Naked Productions, artistic director
PS Like what you see? Join the inner circle over on Patreon!
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