Hooray for nature!
The Nude Nature Dance is a dance done in the nude in open fields or a forest clearing to show characters
share a bond with nature. It is frequently used for
fanservice, but may be played for
squick, if, for example, the participants include
Hippie Parents.
The dance will generally be used to show that the characters are
innocent, blithe, free spirits, or that they have a deep spiritual or religious connection with
Mother Nature. It may simply be celebratory, with the connection to nature signified by the fact that the characters are
au naturel. It may also be a sign of a primitive, animistic religion, and can be a prelude to a
Green Aesop, or, at the other extreme, to
blood sacrifice.
Note that most straight versions of this trope leave out the brambles, thorns, small rocks, stinging insects, mosquitoes, and various other annoyances to be found in
Real Life natural settings that make doing this not as good an idea as it may sound.
Participants may be
Granola Girls,
New Age Retro Hippies,
Hot Witches,
young children or
Magical Forest Dwellers and literal tree-hugging may be involved.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
Art
- This is the subject of a famous painting
◊ by Henri Matise. The subjects are women dancing outdoors in a circle, naked.
Comic Books
- Leetah and Nightfall's forest dance in ElfQuest: Siege at Blue Mountain probably qualifies, aside from its obvious sexual implications. (It's actually foreshadowed by a mention in one of the novelizations, of couples doing that sort of thing.) The novel twist here is that Rainsong, the tribe's seamstress, sneaks in and snatches their clothes with new outfits and the pair are delighted she did with compliments on the new apparel.
Film
- The underwater ballet scene in Piranha 3D.
- In The Crucible, at least one of the girls at the beginning dances naked in the woods.
- Played with in At Play In The Fields Of The Lord, though the film version is definitely not fanservice, since it's Kathy Bates. And her character's basically gone nuts.
- Towards the middle of The Wicker Man (1973), Howie sees a group of young women dancing around a fire, nude.
Howie: But they are... are naked!
Summerisle: Naturally, it's far too dangerous to jump through fire with your clothes on!
- In the French classic film Manon of the Spring, the title character bathes in a spring and then dances around it nude while playing on her harmonica. Outdoor Bath Peeping also included, which becomes a major plot point.
Literature
- Subverted and parodied more than once in the Discworld novels starring either the three witches or Tiffany Aching. Most of the witches find the idea of dancing around naked at night ridiculous, although Nanny Ogg would probably be game if it weren't for impracticalities like thistles, hedgehogs, and the weather being too cool to go nude on all but the warmest summer nights.
- Referenced and subverted in Good Omens when Anathema Device is doing her work at night while practicably clothed, it's dryly commented that most books on witches state that they do their work outside naked and that most people that write these books are men.
- Happens briefly in The Lord of the Rings after the Hobbits have been extricated from the Barrows. Tom Bombadil removes the clothing the Wights had placed on them and invites them to "run naked in the grass" while he retrieves their ponies (with their baggage containing replacement clothing).
- In The Native Star by M.K. Hobson, Animancy can involve dancing naked. There's even a derogatory term for its practitioners derived from this: Skycladdische - literally "clad [only] in sky"
- In I Capture The Castle, Cassandra's artsy stepmother, Topaz, loves doing this kind of thing to "commune" with nature.
Live-Action TV
Music
- Xera's music video for the song "Natura" features a bit of this.
Tabletop Games
Video Games
Web Comics
- Strongly implied in Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic. Several characters run into some satyrs and nymphs in the woods, and get caught up dancing with them. When Gren decides to take a break, she is surprised to find that she's naked.
- In one Nodwick story, Artax receives an invitation to a ceremony held by the Sisters of Sylvanity, an all-female cult of nature-themed spellcasters who do this for ritual magic. (The invitation was fake, sent by three seers to get him to leave the house so they could talk to Piffany. He doesn't say what happened when he showed up, and it's probably best left to the imagination.)
Real Life
- Gardnerian wiccans perform many ceremonies "skyclad" (nude), and sometimes dance outdoors during such ceremonies.
- Dancing was an important part of the education of ancient Spartan youths for both boys and girls. In the warmer months they practiced outdoors and the girls and women supposedly largely did so in the buffnote Boys always did. All male athletic exercise in Ancient Greece was done naked.. Physical fitness and time outdoors were thought to be good for personal character.
