"You land dwellers never understand. It's very important for fairy princesses to commune with nature. In the nude, the way fairies were intended to be."
— Polychrome, Dorothy Must Die
The Nude Nature Dance is Exactly What It Says on the Tin: 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 are In Harmony with Nature in a deeply spiritual or religious way. It may be celebratory, with the connection to Mother 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, ticks, and various other annoyances to be found in Real Life natural settings, which make going nude or merely barefoot in a forest not as good of 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. Compare Earthy Barefoot Character, whose feet may be naked for all the same reasons. May be a part of Stark Naked Sorcery.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- The pagan worshippers from the Retribution Arc in Berserk. Yeah, they could be considered care-free pagans as far as being hedonistic, baby-sacrificing (and eating), disgusting and perverted, psychedelic orgy participants who are actually worshiping an idol of evil gods goes.
- In a filler episode of the Naruto anime, Hinata combined this with a Shower Scene, by dancing in a waterfall.
Arts
- This is the subject of a famous painting
◊ by Henri Matisse. The subjects are women dancing outdoors in a circle, naked.
- Primavera: The Three Graces are not quite nude, but they're draped in transparent cloth that hides nothing while they do a dance in the garden.
Comic Books
- The heroine's coven in Black Magick performs their rituals skyclad save for a hooded cloak. In #1, a ritual is interrupted by Rowan's mobile phone going off.
- Rachel Pollack's run on Doom Patrol had an arc that ended with Dorothy Spinner saving the world from manifestations derived from a book she read on African culture by performing a ritual where she dances topless while drenched in pomegranate juice.
- 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 — in an unusual variation on Gone Swimming, Clothes Stolen — Moonshade, the tribe's seamstress, sneaks in and switches their clothes with new outfits and the pair are delighted she did with compliments on the new apparel.
- In Grendel, psychopathic, foul-mouthed Bounty Hunter Hitchcock Blue is shown to do this when alone in the desert, as a comic Pet the Dog moment.
- Ultimate X Men: Rogue lives in complete harmony with the sentient jungle of Utopia. She does this in her underwear, not actually naked.
Comic Strips
- What's New? with Phil and Dixie: Dixie indulges in a strip about the wilderness. Of course she didn't count on the bees, the snakes, scorpions, spiders or nomadic tribes.
Films — Live-Action
- 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.
- In The Big Lebowski, The Dude is part of the sparse audience watching his landlord ineptly perform one of these on stage, thankfully in a flesh-colored body stocking tactfully embellished with ivy instead of actually naked. Presumably The Dude being there is why the landlord is lenient about collecting the rent.
- In The Crucible, at least one of the girls at the beginning dances naked in the woods.
- In the Czech film Duhova Kulicka, Milanek and his grandfather watch a young girl dancing naked on the bank of a river. She runs off after realizing that she's being watched.
- Not a dance exactly, but Never Cry Wolf has a scene of Tyler at first napping, then running naked across the tundra, in the middle of a caribou stampede. There is no censorship, and this was put out by Disney...
- The underwater ballet scene in Piranha 3D.
- 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.
- Towards the middle of The Wicker Man, Howie sees a group of pregnant, young women dancing around a fire in the nude.
Howie: But they are... are naked!
Summerisle: Why, naturally. It is far too dangerous to jump through the fire with your clothes on!
Literature
- Ivy Carson does a lot of In Harmony with Nature dancing (including dancing on tree branches) in The Changeling 1970 by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. She doesn't disrobe completely, but takes her shoes off and tucks her skirt into the legs of her underpants.
- Alluded to in Children of the Night: Diana tells another Wiccan to bring his robe to the Samhain ritual; "I don't do skyclad". It's for practical reasons; Diana is originally from Connecticut and currently living in New York City, and it's too cold both places for outdoor nude rituals in late October. (In fact, it's snowing when she makes that comment. The other Wiccan is from the South, so is used to temperatures warm enough that skyclad isn't a health risk.)
- Discworld:
- Subverted and parodied more than once in the novels starring either the three witches or Tiffany Aching. Most of the witches find the idea of dancing around naked at night ridiculous, especially the prudish Granny Weatherwax, who although "aware that somewhere under her complicated strata of vests and petticoats there was some skin, that didn't mean to say she approved of it." 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. Magrat was initially sort of fond of the idea without ever bringing it up to the previously mentioned two, out of fear of Granny Weatherax's contempt and that Nanny Ogg might actually try it.
- 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.
- Emberverse: Lampshaded in Dies the Fire when the Wiccans debate whether to do a ceremony naked, and speculate that their founder was just a Dirty Old Man who wanted an excuse to see nude women in Victorian times.
- 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.
- In I Capture the Castle, Cassandra's artsy stepmother, Topaz, loves doing this kind of thing to "commune" with nature.
- 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".
Live-Action TV
- 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.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In the Season 2 opener, Ms. Calendar, walking with Giles, recounts going to Burning Man during summer break. She surmises he would have hated it, but her mention of naked mud dancing piques his interest.
- The Charmed episode "Witch Trial" sees Piper and Phoebe celebrating the equinox with a group of more mundane witches, only to discover that the group plans to perform the rite naked.
Piper: What have we got to lose, OK?
[Piper and Phoebe turn to see the others disrobing]
Phoebe: Well, apparently we've got our clothes to lose. - In one episode of Dharma & Greg, Dharma dances naked on TV to celebrate springtime.
- 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.
- JAG: Mac goes undercover in the episode "The Witches of Gulfport" as a Chief Petty Officer infiltrating a group of Wiccas on a base in Texas and participates in the rituals.
- Played for Laughs on Schmigadoon!, where the hippies Josh falls in with express their dismay at the state of Schmicago and say they have to get back to the natural state of things... that is, nudism. A whole musical number about it.
Topher: Ooh, flowers don't wear pants, so why should we...?
Music
- Igor Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring is based on pagan nature dances, and occasionally (though not always) is staged with some nudity. Unfortunately for the Chosen One, this ends in Human Sacrifice.
- Frank Zappa's "Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance" from Lumpy Gravy and We're Only in It for the Money.
Music Videos
- Xera's music video for the song "Natura" features a bit of this.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons
- The Good-aligned female Drow worshipers of Eilistraee dance nude outdoors in the moonlight. (She's big on dancing in general, actually. Her worshippers are fond of Prestige Classes that involve Magic Music, Magic Dance, and Dance Battler.) The main veneration ritual and one of her manifestations is dancing naked at night around a small light called the Evensong. It's meant less as fanservice (though that's probably the Doylist reason why it was created), and more about letting one's guard down. When a drow comes from a world of secrets and lies, exposing oneself and letting emotions flow in a dance is meant to show that they trust the Dark Dancer to protect them and that they have nothing to hide.note
- Worship of Eldath, the Green Goddess, should be performed as unclad as possible. Since she's a water and nature deity, it is justified to a point.
- In Mage: The Ascension, the Verbena would often perform their rites "skyclad".
Video Games
- Cult of the Lamb: The Sins of the Flesh update introduces the the Rite of Lust ritual where your followers dance naked in a circle around a shrine decorated with flowers.
- In Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, enemies of the Gaian faction might accuse their leader, Lady Deirdre Skye, of dancing naked in the trees, which is a really neat trick considering that Planet's air is poisonous. Though maybe they mean in the Recreation Commons at Gaia's Landing? (Which is noted to be a park planted with Earth trees, and one at which "sunny lovers' trysts" are a normal sight at that.)
Webcomics
- 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 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.)
- Millie of Ozy and Millie has a habit of doing this when it rains, for unstated reasons.
- 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.
Western Animation
- Zigzagged in the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Nature Pants". Throughout the episode, SpongeBob is never shown dancing, but he feels that the best way to embrace the life of nature among the jellyfish is to go out naked (save for socks and shoes).
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. (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.
- English TV presenter Kate Humble has said a few times that she enjoys doing this. Sometimes it just feels like the right thing to do.
- In her interview with the WTF Podcast, Alison Brie said she did this on a trip to Lake Tahoe. She said she took off all her clothes and ran around acting like "a little wood nymph".
- Drew Barrymore was once quoted as saying, "I'll drive in Ireland and park my car and run out into the field and rip all my clothes off and just run in the wheat fields naked. That's for no one to see. That's to have that freedom of feeling at one with nature. So I am completely unguarded, still."
- Billy Connolly did this in the Arctic snow as part of his show A Scot in the Arctic. There wasn't any ceremonial meaning behind it, he just wanted to take his clothes off and skip around in the freezing cold because Naked People Are Funny.
