The naked human body surely is endlessly fascinating, often contentious but always beautiful. Looked at for long enough it is quirky, peculiar, and almost surreal but still beautiful!

In Ballet Rambert’s Eye Candy, the naked body is contorted, distorted and tormented. It is an angry howling beast, turning inward on itself, a filthy creature dug from the earth.

The choreography pivots around repulsion and attraction; desire and disgust; lust and revulsion. The work is a disturbing exploration of the ambivalence many of us feel towards our own bodies and those of ‘the other’. In an age of the ‘Selfie’ we have become increasingly aware of our bodies and how we look.  The rise of body dysmorphia and the desire for the perfect self-image is alarming and insidious. ‘I spy with my little eye…’may be just an innocent childhood game but in this work it is my own eye that traps me in its distorted lens.

Ironically Rambert’s dancers represent the statuesque idealised bodies of ancient works of art such as Venus de Milo and Michelangelo’s David, almost but not quite attainable. Still down the millennia our relationship to the naked human body is at odds with itself.

By Anna Mortimer

Photo by Tanya Pro on Unsplash