To judge by the high-quality 19 minute video released on Vimeo, the talented young photographer and arranger Sarah Small created what is almost a symphony of artistic nudity in her Mini-Tableau # 5, performed on 25th September, 2010 at the powerHouse Arena during the Dumbo Arts Festival.
The stage in this case is a run of monumental stone steps and columns. The performance starts with a lone model, smiling, arms parted, nude except for a pair of high heels which seem to lift her in relief from her surroundings, making her presence there even more striking and singular. To the strains of 'Caro Nome', this charming figure is joined by 35 other models, some clothed, some nude.
Arranged singly and in pairs across the steps in a rich visual tapestry, these figures hint at hidden emotions and obscure dramas in their faces. You have the sense that, like a collector assembling a cabinet of beautiful trinkets, Sarah Small has hand-picked every model, delighting in the contrasts of skin-colour and muscle tone. The music switches to a Bulgarian folk quartet, sung by the Black Sea Hotel, and eerily the models add their half-heard murmurs to the melody.
Unexpectedly, the artist herself goes light-footedly up the steps, as though to assure herself of her models' submission to her artistic purpose. She begins to conduct them like a living orchestra, drawing intense lashings from the beautiful African American woman wrapped around one of the columns. There's something very touching in the connection these 36 strangers have with this slight young woman; it's as if they have been enchanted by a benevolent witch.
The piece climaxes in a performance of an aria by French operatic composer Jules Massenet. This is opera as you won't have seen it before. Singing a capella as the other models slowly drift away out of sight, mezzo-soprano Abigail Wright is naked in every meaning of the word, and all the more profoundly moving for it. Watching a nude body generating such glorious sounds gives you a new respect for the sheer physicality of singing, the way the diaphragm tightens as it brings each new phrase into the world.
