Nude Nature Dance

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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 Fan Service, 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, 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 of Nude Nature Dance include:

Anime and Manga

• In a Filler of the Naruto anime, Hinata combined this with a Shower Scene, by dancing in a waterfall.

Art

• This is the subject of Le bonheur de vivre, a famous painting by Henri Matisse (and currently this page's image). The subjects are women dancing outdoors in a circle, naked.
• The circle dance (with arms linked or hands held) in particular seems to be a subtrope; while not exactly naked (they are wearing tulle translucent dresses), the three Graces in Sandro Botticelli's Primavera are circularly (triangularly?) dancing in a forest.

Comic Books

• Leetah and Nightfall's forest dance in Elf Quest: 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.)

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), Christopher Lee sees a group of young women dancing around a fire, nude.
• 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.
  • Played straight in Lords and Ladies with a group of wannabe witches who dance nude around an ancient stone circle, inviting The Fair Folk into Lancre.
• 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.
• 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

• In Friends. When Phoebe suggests a relationship cleansing ritual, it turns out you can either go the burnt offering route or the "dance naked with sticks" route. Rachel and Monica opt for the first.
• In one episode of Dharma and Greg Dharma dances naked on TV to celebrate springtime.
• In an episode of Bones, when a self-proclaimed witch is found dead, Brennan and Booth decide to check out a local group of Wiccans. They show up at a ceremony in the woods just as the (all-female) group begins to disrobe and start dancing.

Music

• Xera's music video for the song "Natura" features a bit of this.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons, Forgotten Realms campaign setting. The Good-aligned female Drow worshipers of Eilistraee dance nude outdoors in the moonlight. Nudity is symbolic of Freedom, which she represents, and her worshippers are big on dance in general, often taking Prestige Class options that involve Dance Battler, Magic Dance, and Magic Music. That's the official reason given, anyway.

Video Games

• In Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, enemies of the Gaian faction might accuse Lady Deirdre of dancing naked in the trees.

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 is, in fact, fake, sent by three seers to get him to leave the house so they can 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 buff. Physical fitness and time outdoors were thought to be good for personal character.