Artist Director Rafael Bonachela discusses body image and the endless challenge of choreographing the nude.

Perhaps there’s something in the water, but Sydney has had more than its fair share of nudity of late, not least in the dance world where Olivier Dubois’ Tragédie at Carriageworks earlier this year sported 18 naked dancers in a 90-minute marathon of privates on parade.

That show drew wildly mixed reviews, so Rafael Bonachela gets kudos for being next into the lions den with a work entitled Nude: Live, designed to complement the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ exhibition of nude art from Britain’s Tate Gallery.

“We’ve been talking for a while about doing something with the Gallery,” says Bonachela, “We did Inside There Falls with Mira Calix at Sydney Festival two years ago and we’ve done John Calder’s Thirteen Rooms, so any opportunity I have to take Sydney Dance Company outside of the proscenium arch I’ve embraced. It takes a long time to organise, but when they said they had Nude from the Tate, it was like ‘Ok, perfect!’ A celebration of the body and Sydney Dance Company dancers, it was the...